Update Entity

The Update Entity operation updates an existing entity in a table. The Update Entity operation replaces the entire entity, and you can use the operation to remove properties.

Request

You can construct the Update Entity request as follows. HTTPS is recommended. Replace myaccount with the name of your storage account, and mytable with the name of your table. Replace myPartitionKey and myRowKey with the name of the partition key and row key that identify the entity to be updated.

Method	Request URI	HTTP version
PUT	https://myaccount.table.core.windows.net/mytable(PartitionKey='myPartitionKey', RowKey='myRowKey')	HTTP/1.1

The address of the entity to be updated can take a number of forms on the request URI. See the OData Protocol for additional details.

Emulated storage service URI

When you make a request against the emulated storage service, specify the emulator hostname and Azure Table Storage port as 127.0.0.1:10002, followed by the emulated storage account name.

Method	Request URI	HTTP version
PUT	http://127.0.0.1:10002/devstoreaccount1/mytable(PartitionKey='myPartitionKey', RowKey='myRowKey')	HTTP/1.1

Table Storage in the storage emulator differs from Azure Table Storage in several ways. For more information, see Differences between the storage emulator and Azure Storage services.

URI parameters

You can specify the following additional parameters on the request URI.

Parameter	Description
timeout	Optional. The timeout parameter is expressed in seconds. For more information, see Setting timeouts for Table Storage operations.

Request headers

The following table describes required and optional request headers.

Request header	Description
Authorization	Required. Specifies the authorization scheme, account name, and signature. For more information, see Authorize requests to Azure Storage.
Date or x-ms-date	Required. Specifies the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) for the request. For more information, see Authorize requests to Azure Storage.
x-ms-version	Optional. Specifies the version of the operation to use for this request. For more information, see Versioning for the Azure Storage services.
Content-Type	Required. Specifies the content type of the payload. Possible values are application/atom+xml and application/json. For more information about valid content types, see Payload format for Table Storage operations.
Content-Length	Required. The length of the request body.
If-Match	Required. The client can specify the ETag for the entity on the request, to compare to the ETag maintained by the service for the purpose of optimistic concurrency. The update operation is performed only if the ETag sent by the client matches the value maintained by the server. This match indicates that the entity hasn't been modified since it was retrieved by the client. To force an unconditional update, set If-Match to the wildcard character (*).
x-ms-client-request-id	Optional. Provides a client-generated, opaque value with a 1-kibibyte (KiB) character limit that's recorded in the logs when logging is configured. We highly recommend that you use this header to correlate client-side activities with requests that the server receives. For more information, see Monitor Azure Table Storage.

Request body

The Update Entity operation sends the entity to be updated as an OData entity set, which can be either a JSON or an Atom feed. For more information, see Inserting and updating entities.

Note

JSON is the recommended payload format, and it's the only format supported for version 2015-12-11 and later.

Sample request

JSON (version 2013-08-15 and later)

This example shows a sample request URI, the associated request headers, and the request body for a JSON feed.

Request Headers:  
x-ms-version: 2015-12-11  
Accept-Charset: UTF-8  
Content-Type: application/json  
If-Match: *  
x-ms-date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 18:10:24 GMT  
Authorization: SharedKeyLite myaccount:u0sWZKmjBD1B7LY/CwXWCnHdqK4B1P4z8hKy9SVW49o=  
Content-Length: ###  
DataServiceVersion: 3.0;NetFx  
MaxDataServiceVersion: 3.0;NetFx  
  
{  
   "Address":"Santa Clara",  
   "Age":23,  
   "AmountDue":200.23,  
   "CustomerCode@odata.type":"Edm.Guid",  
   "CustomerCode":"c9da6455-213d-42c9-9a79-3e9149a57833",  
   "CustomerSince@odata.type":"Edm.DateTime",  
   "CustomerSince":"2008-07-10T00:00:00",  
   "IsActive":false,  
   "NumberOfOrders@odata.type":"Edm.Int64",  
   "NumberOfOrders":"255",  
   "PartitionKey":"mypartitionkey",  
   "RowKey":"myrowkey"  
}  

Atom feed (versions earlier than 2015-12-11)

This example shows a sample request URI, the associated request headers, and the request body for an Atom feed.

Request URI:  
https://myaccount.table.core.windows.net/mytable(PartitionKey='myPartitionKey',RowKey='myRowKey')  
  
Request Headers:  
x-ms-version: 2013-08-15  
Accept: application/atom+xml,application/xml  
Accept-Charset: UTF-8  
Content-Type: application/atom+xml  
If-Match: *  
x-ms-date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 18:10:24 GMT  
Authorization: SharedKeyLite myaccount:u0sWZKmjBD1B7LY/CwXWCnHdqK4B1P4z8hKy9SVW49o=  
Content-Length: ###  
DataServiceVersion: 1.0;NetFx  
MaxDataServiceVersion: 2.0;NetFx  
  
Request Body:  
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>  
<entry xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/metadata" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">  
  <title />  
  <updated>2008-09-18T23:46:37.168836Z</updated>  
  <author>  
    <name />  
  </author>  
<id>https://myaccount.table.core.windows.net/mytable(PartitionKey='mypartitionkey',RowKey='myrowkey')</id>  
  <content type="application/xml">  
    <m:properties>  
      <d:Address>Santa Clara</d:Address>  
      <d:Age m:type="Edm.Int32">23</d:Age>  
      <d:AmountDue m:type="Edm.Double">200.23</d:AmountDue>  
      <d:CustomerCode m:type="Edm.Guid">c9da6455-213d-42c9-9a79-3e9149a57833</d:CustomerCode>  
      <d:CustomerSince m:type="Edm.DateTime">2008-07-10T00:00:00Z</d:CustomerSince>  
      <d:IsActive m:type="Edm.Boolean">false</d:IsActive>  
      <d:NumOfOrders m:type="Edm.Int64">255</d:NumOfOrders>  
      <d:PartitionKey>mypartitionkey</d:PartitionKey>  
      <d:RowKey>myrowkey</d:RowKey>  
    </m:properties>  
  </content>  
</entry>  

Response

The response includes an HTTP status code and a set of response headers.

Status code

A successful operation returns status code 204 (No Content). For information about status codes, see Status and error codes and Table Storage error codes.

Response headers

The response includes the following headers. The response can also include additional, standard HTTP headers. All standard headers conform to the HTTP/1.1 protocol specification.

Response header	Description
ETag	The ETag for the entity.
x-ms-request-id	This header uniquely identifies the request that was made, and can be used for troubleshooting the request. For more information, see Troubleshooting API operations.
x-ms-version	Indicates the version of Table Storage used to run the request. This header is returned for requests made against version 2009-09-19 and later.
Date	A UTC date/time value that indicates the time at which the response was initiated. The service generates this value.
x-ms-client-request-id	You can use this header to troubleshoot requests and corresponding responses. The value of this header is equal to the value of the x-ms-client-request-id header, if it's present in the request. The value is at most 1,024 visible ASCII characters. If the x-ms-client-request-id header isn't present in the request, this header won't be present in the response.

Response body

None.

Sample response

Response Status:  
HTTP/1.1 204 No Content  
  
Response Headers:  
Connection: Keep-Alive  
x-ms-request-id: 2c085f8f-11a4-4e1d-bd49-82c6bd87649d  
Content-Length: 0  
Cache-Control: no-cache  
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 18:12:54 GMT  
ETag: W/"0x5B168C7B6E589D2"  
DataServiceVersion: 3.0;NetFx  
MaxDataServiceVersion: 3.0;NetFx  
Server: Windows-Azure-Table/1.0 Microsoft-HTTPAPI/2.0  

Authorization

The account owner can perform this operation. Additionally, anyone with a shared access signature who has permission to perform this operation can do so.

Remarks

When you update an entity, you must specify the PartitionKey and RowKey system properties as part of the update operation.

An entity's ETag provides default optimistic concurrency for update operations. The ETag value is opaque, and should not be read or relied upon. Before an update operation occurs, Table Storage verifies that the entity's current ETag value is identical to the ETag value included with the update request in the If-Match header. If the values are identical, Table Storage determines that the entity hasn't been modified since it was retrieved, and the update operation proceeds.

If the entity's ETag differs from that specified with the update request, the update operation fails with status code 412 (Precondition Failed). This error indicates that the entity has been changed on the server since it was retrieved. To resolve this error, retrieve the entity again and reissue the request.

To force an unconditional update operation, set the value of the If-Match header to the wildcard character (*) on the request. Passing this value to the operation overrides the default optimistic concurrency, and ignores any mismatch in ETag values.

If the If-Match header is missing from the request in version 2011-08-18 or later, the service performs an Insert Or Replace Entity (upsert) operation. In versions earlier than 2011-08-18, the service returns status code 400 (Bad Request).

Table Storage doesn't persist null values for properties. Specifying a property with a null value is equivalent to omitting that property in the request.

Note

You can take advantage of either behavior to remove a property from an entity.

To explicitly type a property, specify the appropriate OData data type by setting the m:type attribute within the property definition in the Atom feed. For more information about typing properties, see Inserting and updating entities.

Any application that can authorize and send an HTTP PUT request can update an entity.

For information about performing batch update operations, see Performing entity group transactions.

See also

Merge Entity
Authorize requests to Azure Storage
Setting the OData data service version headers
Status and error codes
Table Storage error codes