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Constructing Filter Strings for the Table Designer

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Note

This article applies to Azure Cloud Services (classic), which is now deprecated for new customers and will be retired on August 31, 2024. Existing services built with this technology are still supported through Azure Cloud Services (extended support). For new development, we recommend that you use a newer service type designed for your specific purpose, such as Azure App Service, Azure Functions, or Azure Container Apps. For the latest list of available services, see Directory of Azure products.

To filter data in an Azure table that is displayed in the Visual Studio Table Designer, you construct a filter string and enter it into the filter field. The filter string syntax is defined by the WCF Data Services and is similar to a SQL WHERE clause, but is sent to the Table service via an HTTP request. The Table Designer handles the proper encoding for you, so to filter on a desired property value, you need only enter the property name, comparison operator, criteria value, and optionally, Boolean operator in the filter field. You don't need to include the $filter query option as you would if you were constructing a URL to query the table via the Storage Services REST API Reference.

WCF Data Services is based on the Open Data Protocol (OData). For details on the filter system query option ($filter), see the OData URI Conventions specification.

Comparison Operators

The following logical operators are supported for all property types:

Logical operator Description Example filter string
eq Equal City eq 'Redmond'
gt Greater than Price gt 20
ge Greater than or equal to Price ge 10
lt Less than Price lt 20
le Less than or equal Price le 100
ne Not equal City ne 'London'
and And Price le 200 and Price gt 3.5
or Or Price le 3.5 or Price gt 200
not Not not isAvailable

When constructing a filter string, the following rules are important:

  • Use the logical operators to compare a property to a value. It isn't possible to compare a property to a dynamic value; one side of the expression must be a constant.
  • All parts of the filter string are case-sensitive.
  • The constant value must be of the same data type as the property in order for the filter to return valid results. For more information about supported property types, see Understanding the Table Service Data Model.

Filtering on String Properties

When you filter on string properties, enclose the string constant in single quotation marks.

The following example filters on the PartitionKey and RowKey properties; additional non-key properties could also be added to the filter string:

PartitionKey eq 'Partition1' and RowKey eq '00001'

You can enclose each filter expression in parentheses, although it's not required:

(PartitionKey eq 'Partition1') and (RowKey eq '00001')

The Table service doesn't support wildcard queries, and they aren't supported in the Table Designer either. However, you can perform prefix matching by using comparison operators on the desired prefix. The following example returns entities with a LastName property beginning with the letter 'A':

LastName ge 'A' and LastName lt 'B'

Filtering on Numeric Properties

To filter on an integer or floating-point number, specify the number without quotation marks.

This example returns all entities with an Age property whose value is greater than 30:

Age gt 30

This example returns all entities with an AmountDue property whose value is less than or equal to 100.25:

AmountDue le 100.25

Filtering on Boolean Properties

To filter on a Boolean value, specify true or false without quotation marks.

The following example returns all entities where the IsActive property is set to true:

IsActive eq true

You can also write this filter expression without the logical operator. In the following example, the Table service also returns all entities where IsActive is true:

IsActive

To return all entities where IsActive is false, you can use the not operator:

not IsActive

Filtering on DateTime Properties

To filter on a DateTime value, specify the datetime keyword, followed by the date/time constant in single quotation marks. The date/time constant must be in combined UTC format, as described in Formatting DateTime Property Values.

The following example returns entities where the CustomerSince property is equal to July 10, 2008:

CustomerSince eq datetime'2008-07-10T00:00:00Z'