Azure Storage File Share client library for Python

Article
11/13/2024

Azure File Share storage offers fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via the industry standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Azure file shares can be mounted concurrently by cloud or on-premises deployments of Windows, Linux, and macOS. Additionally, Azure file shares can be cached on Windows Servers with Azure File Sync for fast access near where the data is being used.

Azure file shares can be used to:

Replace or supplement on-premises file servers
"Lift and shift" applications
Simplify cloud development with shared application settings, diagnostic share, and Dev/Test/Debug tools

Getting started

Prerequisites

Python 3.8 or later is required to use this package. For more details, please read our page on Azure SDK for Python version support policy.
You must have an Azure subscription and an Azure storage account to use this package.

Install the package

Install the Azure Storage File Share client library for Python with pip:

pip install azure-storage-file-share

Create a storage account

If you wish to create a new storage account, you can use the Azure Portal, Azure PowerShell, or Azure CLI:

# Create a new resource group to hold the storage account -
# if using an existing resource group, skip this step
az group create --name my-resource-group --location westus2

# Create the storage account
az storage account create -n my-storage-account-name -g my-resource-group

Create the client

The Azure Storage File Share client library for Python allows you to interact with four types of resources: the storage account itself, file shares, directories, and files. Interaction with these resources starts with an instance of a client. To create a client object, you will need the storage account's file service URL and a credential that allows you to access the storage account:

from azure.storage.fileshare import ShareServiceClient

service = ShareServiceClient(account_url="https://<my-storage-account-name>.file.core.windows.net/", credential=credential)

Looking up the account URL

You can find the storage account's file service URL using the Azure Portal, Azure PowerShell, or Azure CLI:

# Get the file service URL for the storage account
az storage account show -n my-storage-account-name -g my-resource-group --query "primaryEndpoints.file"

Types of credentials

The credential parameter may be provided in a number of different forms, depending on the type of authorization you wish to use:

To use a shared access signature (SAS) token, provide the token as a string. If your account URL includes the SAS token, omit the credential parameter. You can generate a SAS token from the Azure Portal under "Shared access signature" or use one of the generate_sas() functions to create a sas token for the storage account, share, or file:

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
from azure.storage.fileshare import ShareServiceClient, generate_account_sas, ResourceTypes, AccountSasPermissions

sas_token = generate_account_sas(
    account_name="<storage-account-name>",
    account_key="<account-access-key>",
    resource_types=ResourceTypes(service=True),
    permission=AccountSasPermissions(read=True),
    expiry=datetime.utcnow() + timedelta(hours=1)
)

share_service_client = ShareServiceClient(account_url="https://<my_account_name>.file.core.windows.net", credential=sas_token)

To use a storage account shared key (aka account key or access key), provide the key as a string. This can be found in the Azure Portal under the "Access Keys" section or by running the following Azure CLI command:

az storage account keys list -g MyResourceGroup -n MyStorageAccount

Use the key as the credential parameter to authenticate the client:
```
from azure.storage.fileshare import ShareServiceClient
service = ShareServiceClient(account_url="https://<my_account_name>.file.core.windows.net", credential="<account_access_key>")
```

Creating the client from a connection string

Depending on your use case and authorization method, you may prefer to initialize a client instance with a storage connection string instead of providing the account URL and credential separately. To do this, pass the storage connection string to the client's from_connection_string class method:

from azure.storage.fileshare import ShareServiceClient

connection_string = "DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=xxxx;AccountKey=xxxx;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net"
service = ShareServiceClient.from_connection_string(conn_str=connection_string)

The connection string to your storage account can be found in the Azure Portal under the "Access Keys" section or by running the following CLI command:

az storage account show-connection-string -g MyResourceGroup -n MyStorageAccount

Key concepts

The following components make up the Azure File Share Service:

The storage account itself
A file share within the storage account
An optional hierarchy of directories within the file share
A file within the file share, which may be up to 1 TiB in size

The Azure Storage File Share client library for Python allows you to interact with each of these components through the use of a dedicated client object.

Async Clients

This library includes a complete async API supported on Python 3.5+. To use it, you must first install an async transport, such as aiohttp. See azure-core documentation for more information.

Async clients and credentials should be closed when they're no longer needed. These objects are async context managers and define async close methods.

Clients

Four different clients are provided to interact with the various components of the File Share Service:

ShareServiceClient - this client represents interaction with the Azure storage account itself, and allows you to acquire preconfigured client instances to access the file shares within. It provides operations to retrieve and configure the service properties as well as list, create, and delete shares within the account. To perform operations on a specific share, retrieve a client using the get_share_client method.
ShareClient - this client represents interaction with a specific file share (which need not exist yet), and allows you to acquire preconfigured client instances to access the directories and files within. It provides operations to create, delete, configure, or create snapshots of a share and includes operations to create and enumerate the contents of directories within it. To perform operations on a specific directory or file, retrieve a client using the get_directory_client or get_file_client methods.
ShareDirectoryClient - this client represents interaction with a specific directory (which need not exist yet). It provides operations to create, delete, or enumerate the contents of an immediate or nested subdirectory, and includes operations to create and delete files within it. For operations relating to a specific subdirectory or file, a client for that entity can also be retrieved using the get_subdirectory_client and get_file_client functions.
ShareFileClient - this client represents interaction with a specific file (which need not exist yet). It provides operations to upload, download, create, delete, and copy a file.

For details on path naming restrictions, see Naming and Referencing Shares, Directories, Files, and Metadata.

Examples

The following sections provide several code snippets covering some of the most common Storage File Share tasks, including:

Creating a file share
Uploading a file
Downloading a file
Listing contents of a directory

Create a file share to store your files

from azure.storage.fileshare import ShareClient

share = ShareClient.from_connection_string(conn_str="<connection_string>", share_name="myshare")
share.create_share()

Use the async client to create a file share

from azure.storage.fileshare.aio import ShareClient

share = ShareClient.from_connection_string(conn_str="<connection_string>", share_name="myshare")
await share.create_share()

Uploading a file

Upload a file to the share

from azure.storage.fileshare import ShareFileClient

file_client = ShareFileClient.from_connection_string(conn_str="<connection_string>", share_name="myshare", file_path="my_file")

with open("./SampleSource.txt", "rb") as source_file:
    file_client.upload_file(source_file)

Upload a file asynchronously

from azure.storage.fileshare.aio import ShareFileClient

file_client = ShareFileClient.from_connection_string(conn_str="<connection_string>", share_name="myshare", file_path="my_file")

with open("./SampleSource.txt", "rb") as source_file:
    await file_client.upload_file(source_file)

Downloading a file

Download a file from the share

from azure.storage.fileshare import ShareFileClient

file_client = ShareFileClient.from_connection_string(conn_str="<connection_string>", share_name="myshare", file_path="my_file")

with open("DEST_FILE", "wb") as file_handle:
    data = file_client.download_file()
    data.readinto(file_handle)

Download a file asynchronously

from azure.storage.fileshare.aio import ShareFileClient

file_client = ShareFileClient.from_connection_string(conn_str="<connection_string>", share_name="myshare", file_path="my_file")

with open("DEST_FILE", "wb") as file_handle:
    data = await file_client.download_file()
    await data.readinto(file_handle)

Listing contents of a directory

List all directories and files under a parent directory

from azure.storage.fileshare import ShareDirectoryClient

parent_dir = ShareDirectoryClient.from_connection_string(conn_str="<connection_string>", share_name="myshare", directory_path="parent_dir")

my_list = list(parent_dir.list_directories_and_files())
print(my_list)

List contents of a directory asynchronously

from azure.storage.fileshare.aio import ShareDirectoryClient

parent_dir = ShareDirectoryClient.from_connection_string(conn_str="<connection_string>", share_name="myshare", directory_path="parent_dir")

my_files = []
async for item in parent_dir.list_directories_and_files():
    my_files.append(item)
print(my_files)

Optional Configuration

Optional keyword arguments that can be passed in at the client and per-operation level.

Retry Policy configuration

Use the following keyword arguments when instantiating a client to configure the retry policy:

retry_total (int): Total number of retries to allow. Takes precedence over other counts. Pass in retry_total=0 if you do not want to retry on requests. Defaults to 10.
retry_connect (int): How many connection-related errors to retry on. Defaults to 3.
retry_read (int): How many times to retry on read errors. Defaults to 3.
retry_status (int): How many times to retry on bad status codes. Defaults to 3.
retry_to_secondary (bool): Whether the request should be retried to secondary, if able. This should only be enabled of RA-GRS accounts are used and potentially stale data can be handled. Defaults to False.

Other client / per-operation configuration

Other optional configuration keyword arguments that can be specified on the client or per-operation.

Client keyword arguments:

connection_timeout (int): The number of seconds the client will wait to establish a connection to the server. Defaults to 20 seconds.
read_timeout (int): The number of seconds the client will wait, between consecutive read operations, for a response from the server. This is a socket level timeout and is not affected by overall data size. Client-side read timeouts will be automatically retried. Defaults to 60 seconds.
transport (Any): User-provided transport to send the HTTP request.

Per-operation keyword arguments:

raw_response_hook (callable): The given callback uses the response returned from the service.
raw_request_hook (callable): The given callback uses the request before being sent to service.
client_request_id (str): Optional user specified identification of the request.
user_agent (str): Appends the custom value to the user-agent header to be sent with the request.
logging_enable (bool): Enables logging at the DEBUG level. Defaults to False. Can also be passed in at the client level to enable it for all requests.
logging_body (bool): Enables logging the request and response body. Defaults to False. Can also be passed in at the client level to enable it for all requests.
headers (dict): Pass in custom headers as key, value pairs. E.g. headers={'CustomValue': value}

Troubleshooting

General

Storage File clients raise exceptions defined in Azure Core.

This list can be used for reference to catch thrown exceptions. To get the specific error code of the exception, use the error_code attribute, i.e, exception.error_code.

Logging

This library uses the standard logging library for logging. Basic information about HTTP sessions (URLs, headers, etc.) is logged at INFO level.

Detailed DEBUG level logging, including request/response bodies and unredacted headers, can be enabled on a client with the logging_enable argument:

import sys
import logging
from azure.storage.fileshare import ShareServiceClient

# Create a logger for the 'azure.storage.fileshare' SDK
logger = logging.getLogger('azure.storage.fileshare')
logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

# Configure a console output
handler = logging.StreamHandler(stream=sys.stdout)
logger.addHandler(handler)

# This client will log detailed information about its HTTP sessions, at DEBUG level
service_client = ShareServiceClient.from_connection_string("your_connection_string", logging_enable=True)

Similarly, logging_enable can enable detailed logging for a single operation, even when it isn't enabled for the client:

service_client.get_service_properties(logging_enable=True)

Next steps

More sample code

Get started with our File Share samples.

Several Storage File Share Python SDK samples are available to you in the SDK's GitHub repository. These samples provide example code for additional scenarios commonly encountered while working with Storage File Share:

file_samples_hello_world.py (async version) - Examples found in this article:
- Client creation
- Create a file share
- Upload a file
file_samples_authentication.py (async version) - Examples for authenticating and creating the client:
- From a connection string
- From a shared access key
- From a shared access signature token
file_samples_service.py (async version) - Examples for interacting with the file service:
- Get and set service properties
- Create, list, and delete shares
- Get a share client
file_samples_share.py (async version) - Examples for interacting with file shares:
- Create a share snapshot
- Set share quota and metadata
- List directories and files
- Get the directory or file client to interact with a specific entity
file_samples_directory.py (async version) - Examples for interacting with directories:
- Create a directory and add files
- Create and delete subdirectories
- Get the subdirectory client
file_samples_client.py (async version) - Examples for interacting with files:
- Create, upload, download, and delete files
- Copy a file from a URL

Additional documentation

For more extensive documentation on Azure File Share storage, see the Azure File Share storage documentation on docs.microsoft.com.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

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Getting started

Prerequisites

Install the package

Create a storage account

Create the client

Looking up the account URL

Types of credentials

Creating the client from a connection string

Key concepts

Async Clients

Clients

Examples

Uploading a file

Downloading a file

Listing contents of a directory

Optional Configuration

Retry Policy configuration

Other client / per-operation configuration

Troubleshooting

General

Logging

Next steps

More sample code

Additional documentation

Contributing

Additional resources

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Azure Storage File Share client library for Python - version 12.20.0

Getting started

Prerequisites

Install the package

Create a storage account

Create the client

Looking up the account URL

Types of credentials

Creating the client from a connection string

Key concepts

Async Clients

Clients

Examples

Creating a file share

Uploading a file

Downloading a file

Listing contents of a directory

Optional Configuration

Retry Policy configuration

Other client / per-operation configuration

Troubleshooting

General

Logging

Next steps

More sample code

Additional documentation

Contributing

Additional resources