Edit

Use blob index tags to manage and find data with Java

  • Article

This article shows how to use blob index tags to manage and find data using the Azure Storage client library for Java.

Prerequisites

About blob index tags

Blob index tags categorize data in your storage account using key-value tag attributes. These tags are automatically indexed and exposed as a searchable multi-dimensional index to easily find data. This article shows you how to set, get, and find data using blob index tags.

Blob index tags aren't supported for storage accounts with hierarchical namespace enabled. To learn more about the blob index tag feature along with known issues and limitations, see Manage and find Azure Blob data with blob index tags.

Set tags

You can set index tags if your code has authorized access to blob data through one of the following mechanisms:

For more information, see Setting blob index tags.

You can set tags by using the following method:

The specified tags in this method will replace existing tags. If old values must be preserved, they must be downloaded and included in the call to this method. The following example shows how to set tags:

public void setBlobTags(BlobClient blobClient) {
    // Get any existing tags for the blob if they need to be preserved
    Map<String, String> tags = blobClient.getTags();

    // Add or modify tags
    tags.put("Sealed", "false");
    tags.put("Content", "image");
    tags.put("Date", "2022-01-01");

    // setTags will replace existing tags with the map entries we pass in
    blobClient.setTags(tags);
}

You can delete all tags by passing an empty Map object into the setTags method:

public void clearBlobTags(BlobClient blobClient) {
    Map<String, String> tags = new HashMap<String, String>();
    blobClient.setTags(tags);
}

Get tags

You can get index tags if your code has authorized access to blob data through one of the following mechanisms:

For more information, see Getting and listing blob index tags.

You can get tags by using the following method:

The following example shows how to retrieve and iterate over the blob's tags:

public void getBlobTags(BlobClient blobClient) {
    Map<String, String> tags = blobClient.getTags();

    System.out.println("Blob tags:");
    for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : tags.entrySet())
        System.out.println("Key = " + entry.getKey() + ", Value = " + entry.getValue());
}

Filter and find data with blob index tags

You can use index tags to find and filter data if your code has authorized access to blob data through one of the following mechanisms:

For more information, see Finding data using blob index tags.

Note

You can't use index tags to retrieve previous versions. Tags for previous versions aren't passed to the blob index engine. For more information, see Conditions and known issues.

You can find data by using the following method:

The following example finds all blobs tagged as an image:

public void findBlobsByTag(BlobContainerClient blobContainerClient) {
    String query = "\"Content\"='image'";

    blobContainerClient.findBlobsByTags(query)
            .forEach(blob -> System.out.printf("Name: %s%n", blob.getName()));
}

Resources

To learn more about how to use index tags to manage and find data using the Azure Blob Storage client library for Java, see the following resources.

REST API operations

The Azure SDK for Java contains libraries that build on top of the Azure REST API, allowing you to interact with REST API operations through familiar Java paradigms. The client library methods for managing and using blob index tags use the following REST API operations:

Code samples

Client library resources

See also