Azure Storage Blob Rename

You can now with the new release in public preview of ADLS Gen 2 ( Azure Data Lake Storage Gen 2)

The Hierarchical Namespace capability allows you to perform atomic manipulation of directories and files which includes Rename operation.

However, make note of the following: "With the preview release, if you enable the hierarchical namespace, there is no interoperability of data or operations between Blob and Data Lake Storage Gen2 REST APIs. This functionality will be added during preview."

You will need to make sure you create the blobs (files ) using ADLS Gen 2 to rename them. Otherwise, wait for the interoperability between Blob APIs and ADLS Gen 2 to be added during the preview time period.

Using Monza Cloud's Azure Explorer, I can rename an 18 Gigabyte blob in under a second. Microsoft's Azure Storage Explorer takes 29 sec to clone that same blob, so Monza is not doing a copy. I know it is fast because immediately after the Monza rename, clicking the container in Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer shows the blob with the new name.

Renaming is not possible. Here is a workaround using Azure SDK for .NET v12:

BlobClient sourceBlob = container.GetBlobClient(sourceBlobName);
BlobClient destBlob = container.GetBlobClient(destBlobName);
CopyFromUriOperation ops = await destBlob.StartCopyFromUriAsync(sourceBlob.Uri);

long copiedContentLength = 0;
while (ops.HasCompleted == false)
{
    copiedContentLength = await ops.WaitForCompletionAsync();
    await Task.Delay(100);
}
await sourceBlob.DeleteAsync();

The only way at the mement is to move the src blob to a new destination/name. Here is my code to do this

 public async Task<CloudBlockBlob> RenameAsync(CloudBlockBlob srcBlob, CloudBlobContainer destContainer,string name)
    {
        CloudBlockBlob destBlob;

        if (srcBlob == null && srcBlob.Exists())
        {
            throw new Exception("Source blob cannot be null and should exist.");
        }

        if (!destContainer.Exists())
        {
            throw new Exception("Destination container does not exist.");
        }

        //Copy source blob to destination container            
        destBlob = destContainer.GetBlockBlobReference(name);
        await destBlob.StartCopyAsync(srcBlob);
        //remove source blob after copy is done.
        srcBlob.Delete();
        return destBlob;
    }

Here is a code sample if you want the blob lookup as part of the method:

    public CloudBlockBlob RenameBlob(string oldName, string newName, CloudBlobContainer container)
    {
        if (!container.Exists())
        {
            throw new Exception("Destination container does not exist.");
        }
        //Get blob reference
        CloudBlockBlob sourceBlob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(oldName);

        if (sourceBlob == null && sourceBlob.Exists())
        {
            throw new Exception("Source blob cannot be null and should exist.");
        }

        // Get blob reference to which the new blob must be copied
        CloudBlockBlob destBlob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(newName);
        destBlob.StartCopyAsync(sourceBlob);

        //Delete source blob
        sourceBlob.Delete();
        return destBlob;
    }

There is also a way without copying your blob to rename it, and without running any script: mounting Azure Blob storage to your OS: https://docs.microsoft.com/bs-latn-ba/azure/storage/blobs/storage-how-to-mount-container-linux

Then you can just use mv and your blob will be renamed instantly.

Using Azure Storage Explorer is the easiest way to manually rename a blob. You can download it here https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/features/storage-explorer/#overview

If you set the ContentDisposition property with

attachment;filename="yourfile.txt"

The name of the download over http will be whatever you want.

I think Storage was built with the assumption that data would be stored in a way with unique identifiers primarily used as the filenames. Issuing Shared Access Signatures for all downloads is a bit weird though, so this isn't ideal for some people.

But I think abstracting away the user-facing filename is overall a good practice and encourages a more stable architecture overall.