Friday, January 09, 2009

Azure Storage Explorer

by David Pallmann via David Pallmann's Technology Blog on 1/9/2009 2:53:00 PM

I've been wanting an easier way to view what's in my Azure cloud storage so I decided to write a tool for the purpose. Azure Storage Explorer now exists and is available here on CodePlex.

Today Azure Storage Explorer is limited to letting you view your Azure storage (including data details of your blobs, queue messages, and table records) but eventually I'd like the tool to also allow add/rename/delete operations on storage items and import/export of data.

Here's the table storage view. Your tables are listed in the tree view at left. If you select a table, its records are displayed in the list item view at right. If you select a record, it is displayed in XML form below.

Here's the blob view. Your containers are listed in the tree view at left. Containers with no items are greyed out. Clicking on a container lists your blobs in the list item view at right. Selecting a blob shows its content below. You can use menu items or toolbar buttons to switch between a text and binary view of the data.





Here's the queue view. Your queues are listed in the tree view pane at left. Queues with no messages are greyed out. Selecting a queue lists queue messages in the list item view at right. The messages are peeked, not removed from the queue, and there's a limit of 32 messages that can be shown. Clicking on a queue message displays its data below. Again you can switch between a textual view and a binary view.





The only set up required is to specify the name and key of your storage account in the exe's configuration file.

I'll continue to improve Azure Storage Explorer over time and would love to hear feedback on it.