Get Directory Properties

The Get Directory Properties operation returns all system properties for the specified directory, and it can also be used to check the existence of a directory. The returned data doesn't include the files in the directory or any subdirectories.

Protocol availability

Enabled file share protocol Available
SMB Yes
NFS No

Request

The Get Directory Properties request may be constructed as follows. We recommend that you use HTTPS.

Method Request URI HTTP version
GET/HEAD https://myaccount.file.core.windows.net/myshare/myparentdirectorypath/mydirectory?restype=directory HTTP/1.1
GET/HEAD https://myaccount.file.core.windows.net/myshare/ myparentdirectorypath/mydirectory?restype=directory&sharesnapshot=<DateTime> HTTP/1.1

Replace the path components that are shown in the request URI with your own, as follows:

Path component Description
myaccount The name of your storage account.
myshare The name of your file share.
myparentdirectorypath Optional. The path to the parent directory.
mydirectory The name of the directory.

For information about path naming restrictions, see Name and reference shares, directories, files, and metadata.

URI parameters

The following additional parameters may be specified on the request URI:

Parameter Description
sharesnapshot Optional. Version 2017-04-17 and later. The sharesnapshot parameter is an opaque DateTime value that, when present, specifies the share snapshot to query for the directory properties
timeout Optional. The timeout parameter is expressed in seconds. For more information, see Set time-outs for Azure Files operations.

Request headers

The required and optional request headers are described in the following table:

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 Required for all authorized requests, optional for anonymous requests. Specifies the version of the operation to use for this request. For more information, see Versioning for the Azure Storage services.
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 Files.
x-ms-file-request-intent Required if Authorization header specifies an OAuth token. Acceptable value is backup. This header specifies that the Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/fileServices/readFileBackupSemantics/action or Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/fileServices/writeFileBackupSemantics/action should be granted if they are included in the RBAC policy assigned to the identity that is authorized using the Authorization header. Available for version 2022-11-02 and later.
x-ms-allow-trailing-dot: { <Boolean> } Optional. Version 2022-11-02 and later. The Boolean value specifies if a trailing dot present in request url should be trimmed or not. For more information, see Naming and referencing shares, directories, files, and metadata.

Request body

None.

Sample request

HEAD https://myaccount.file.core.windows.net/myshare/myparentdirectorypath/mydirectory?restype=directory HTTP/1.1  
  
Request Headers:  
x-ms-version: 2015-02-21  
x-ms-date: <date>  
Authorization: SharedKey myaccount:Z5043vY9MesKNh0PNtksNc9nbXSSqGHueE00JdjidOQ=  

Response

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

Status code

A successful operation returns status code 200 (OK).

For more information about status codes, see Status and error codes.

Response headers

The response for this operation includes the following headers. The response may also include additional standard HTTP headers. All standard headers conform to the HTTP/1.1 protocol specification.

Response header Description
ETag The ETag contains a value that you can use to perform operations conditionally. The value is enclosed in quotation marks.
Last-Modified Returns the date and time when the directory was last modified. The date format follows RFC 1123. For more information, see Represent date/time values in headers. Operations on files within the directory don't affect the last modified time of the directory.
x-ms-meta-name:value A set of name-value pairs that contain metadata for the directory.
x-ms-request-id Returns the unique identifier of the request, which can help you troubleshoot the request. For more information, see Troubleshoot API operations.
x-ms-version Indicates the service version that was used to execute the request.
Date A UTC date/time value that's generated by the service, which indicates the time when the response was initiated.
x-ms-server-encrypted: true/false Version 2017-04-17 and later. The value of this header is set to true if the directory metadata is completely encrypted using the specified algorithm. If the metadata isn't encrypted, the value is set to false.
x-ms-file-permission-key Version 2019-02-02 and later. The key of the permission of the directory.
x-ms-file-attributes Version 2019-02-02 and later. The file system attributes on the directory. For more information, see the list of available attributes.
x-ms-file-creation-time Version 2019-02-02 and later. The UTC date/time value that represents the creation time property for a directory.
x-ms-file-last-write-time Version 2019-02-02 and later. The UTC date/time value that represents the last write time property for the directory.
x-ms-file-change-time Version 2019-02-02 and later. The UTC date/time value that represents the change time property for the directory.
x-ms-file-file-id Version 2019-02-02 and later. The file ID of the directory.
x-ms-file-parent-id Version 2019-02-02 and later. The parent file ID of the directory.
x-ms-client-request-id Can be used to troubleshoot requests and their 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 and the value contains no more than 1,024 visible ASCII characters. If the x-ms-client-request-id header isn't present in the request, it isn't present in the response.

Response body

None.

Sample response

Response Status:  
HTTP/1.1 200 OK  
  
Response Headers:  
Transfer-Encoding: chunked  
Date: <date>  
ETag: "0x8CAFB82EFF70C46"  
Last-Modified: <date>  
x-ms-version: 2015-02-21  
Server: Windows-Azure-File/1.0 Microsoft-HTTPAPI/2.0  

Authorization

Only the account owner may call this operation.

Remarks

If the specified directory path doesn't exist, the request fails with status code 404 (Not Found).

See also

Operations on directories