Azure Blob 400 Bad request on Creation of container

Question

I'm developing an ASP.Net MVC 4 app and I'm using Azure Blob to store the images that my users are going to upload. I have the following code:

 var storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["StorageConnection"].ConnectionString);

 var blobStorage = storageAccount.CreateCloudBlobClient();
 //merchantKey is just a GUID that is asociated with the merchant
 var containerName = ("ImageAds-" + merchant.merchantKey.ToString()).ToLower();
 CloudBlobContainer container = blobStorage.GetContainerReference(containerName);
 if (container.CreateIfNotExist())
    {
       //Upload the file
    } 

as soon as the if statement is excecuted I'm getting the following exception:

  {"The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request."}

I thought it was the container's name but I don't see anything wrong with it. The connection string seems to create a good storage with all details for the blob. I'm at a loss. I've researched the web and everyone is saying it's a naming problem but I can't find anything wrong with it.

Test Container name that I used: imageads-57905553-8585-4d7c-8270-be9e611eda81

The Container has the following uri: {http://127.0.0.1:10000/devstoreaccount1/imageads-57905553-8585-4d7c-8270-be9e611eda81}

UPDATE: I have changed the container name to just image and I still get the same exception. also the development connection string is as follows: <add name="StorageConnection" connectionString="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" />

Answer 1

As you found through your research, the problem is the name.

You say that your test container is named imageads-57905553-8585-4d7c-8270-be9e611eda81, but in your code you are using ImageAds-57905553-8585-4d7c-8270-be9e611eda81. Notice the difference in capitalization. If you switch your container name to all lower case it will work correctly.

For more information, see #3 under Container Names at Naming and Referencing Containers, Blobs, and Metadata:

3. All letters in a container name must be lowercase.

Answer 2

To expand on @kwill's answer, I implemented a solution for converting any string into an acceptable container name, based on Azure's rules for container naming:

public static string ToURLSlug(this string s)
{
    return Regex.Replace(s, @"[^a-z0-9]+", "-", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)
        .Trim(new char[] { '-' })
        .ToLower();
}

Then, when you try to get the container, clean it up first:

CloudBlobContainer container = blobClient.GetContainerReference(bucket.ToURLSlug());

Answer 3

I actually ended up finding the problem.

My problem was that the blob storage emulator would not start (the other emulators would start and I missed the blob). The problem ended up being that the port 10000 (default blob emulator port) was already being used by another software. I used Netstat cmd tool to see which software it was, killed it and its now working like a charm!!! Thanks everyone!!