How can I get references to BlockBlob objects from CloudBlobDirectory.ListBlobs?

Question

I am using the Microsoft Azure .NET client libraries to interact with Azure cloud storage. I need to be able to access additional information about each blob in its metadata col

Answer 1

The previous answers are good. I just wanted to point out 2 things:

1) Nowadays ASYNC programming is recommended to do and supported by Azure SDK as well. So try to use it:

CloudBlobDirectory dir = container.GetDirectoryReference(dirPath);
var blobs = dir.ListBlobs(true);

foreach (IListBlobItem item in blobs)
{
    CloudBlockBlob blob = (CloudBlockBlob)item;
    await blob.FetchAttributesAsync(); //Use async calls...
}

2) Fetching Metadata in a separate call is not efficient. The code makes 2 HTTP request per blob object. ListBlobs() method supports getting Metadata with as well in one call by setting BlobListingDetails parameter:

CloudBlobDirectory dir = container.GetDirectoryReference(dirPath);
var blobs = dir.ListBlobs(useFlatBlobListing: true, blobListingDetails: BlobListingDetails.Metadata);

I recommend to use second code it it is possible. Since it is the most efficient way to fetch Metadata.