I am currently trying to download a file from Azure blob storage using the DownloadToStream method to download the contents of a blob as a text string. However I am not getting anything back but an empty string.
Here is my code that I use to connect to the azure blob container and retrieve the blob file.
public static string DownLoadFroalaImageAsString(string blobStorageName, string companyID)
{
// Retrieve storage account from connection string.
CloudStorageAccount storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(
CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("StorageConnectionString"));
// Create the blob client.
CloudBlobClient blobClient = storageAccount.CreateCloudBlobClient();
// Retrieve reference to a previously created container.
CloudBlobContainer container = blobClient.GetContainerReference(companyID.ToLower());
//retrieving the actual filename of the blob
string removeString = "BLOB/";
string trimmedString = blobStorageName.Remove(blobStorageName.IndexOf(removeString), removeString.Length);
// Retrieve reference to a blob named "trimmedString"
CloudBlockBlob blockBlob2 = container.GetBlockBlobReference(trimmedString);
string text;
using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
{
blockBlob2.DownloadToStream(memoryStream);
text = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray());
}
return text;
}
I was following along this documentation however I cannot seem to get it to work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
In order to download an Azure BLOB Storage item by its URL, you need to instantiate a CloudBlockBlob yourself using the item's URL: var blob = new CloudBlockBlob(new Uri(pdfFileUrl), cloudStorageAccount. Credentials); This blob can then be downloaded with the code you originally posted.
However I am not getting anything back but an empty string.
I test your supplied code on my side, it works correctly. I assume that the test blob content is empty in your case. We could trouble shooting with following ways:
1.please have a try to check the Length of memoryStream. If length equal 0 we could know that the blob content is empty.
using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
{
blockBlob2.DownloadToStream(memoryStream);
var length = memoryStream.Length;
text = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray());
}
2.We could upload a blob with content to container, we could do that with Azure portal or Microsoft Azure storage explorer easily. And please have a try test it with uploaded blob.
If you want to get the text from the blob, you can use DownloadTextAsync()
var text = await blockBlob2.DownloadTextAsync();
If you want to return file stream back to an API respoinse, you can use FileStreamResult which is IActionResult.
var stream = await blockBlob2.OpenReadAsync();
return File(stream, blockBlob2.Properties.ContentType, "name");
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