Can I upload a stream to Azure blob storage without specifying its length upfront?

Question

I don't know if it's relevant, but I am using Java with the azure-storage-android-0.2.0.aar for the upload.

I can upload files to Microsoft Azure blob storage

CloudBlockBlob blob = container.getBlockBlobReference("filename.ext");
blob.upload(inputStream, n);

where n is the length of the inputStream when it is derived from the file.

Here's my problem: I would like to stream directly, for example from the camera, which apparently isn't possible as Azure requires the length parameter for the upload, which is unknown while still streaming.

Is there a reason why I need to specify the length? (MD5?) And is there a way to upload while the stream is still being produced (which obviously is the idea of an InputStream in Java, the reason why InputStream does not have a length property)?

Answer 1

We’ll log feature request to enable uploading from a stream without specifying length. For now, you may want to use the openOutputStream method which has a write method taking a byte[] or an int. An example using the int method is below:

    CloudBlockBlob blockBlob = container.getBlockBlobReference(‘myblob’); // assuming container was already created

    BlobOutputStream blobOutputStream = blockBlob.openOutputStream();
    ByteArrayInputStream inputStream = new ByteArrayInputStream(buffer); // assuming buffer is a byte[] with your data

    int next = inputStream.read();
    while (next != -1) {
          blobOutputStream.write(next);
          next = inputStream.read();
    }

    blobOutputStream.close();