NEWS.md

In AzureStor: Storage Management in 'Azure'

AzureStor 3.7.0

• Add support for blob snapshots and versions:
• New functions create_blob_snapshot, list_blob_snapshots and delete_blob_snapshot to manage snapshots, and list_blob_versions and delete_blob_version to manaage versions.
• Add generics create_storage_snapshot, list_storage_snapshots, delete_blob_snapshot, list_storage_versions and list_storage_version. These dispatch to the above functions for blob containers.
• Argument snapshot added to download_blob, get_storage_properties and get_storage_metadata to work with specific snapshots
• Add missing directory_depth argument for the az_storage$get_service_sas method (#114)
• Update client API version to "2021-06-08".

AzureStor 3.6.1

• Fix an issue when authenticating with a SAS and the connection is retried.
• Fix a bug in listing storage files under ADLSgen2 introduced in the previous version (#109).

AzureStor 3.6.0

• Add a storage_dir_exists generic to check for existence of a directory. This dispatches to the service-specific methods blob_dir_exists, azure_dir_exists and adls_dir_exists.
• Add an auth_header argument to copy_url_to_blob and multicopy_url_to_blob (and by extension, copy_url_to_storage and multicopy_url_to_storage) to pass an Authorization HTTP header to the source. This allows copying files that are not publicly available or otherwise have access restrictions.
• New storage accounts created with the AzureRMR::az_resource_group$create_storage_account method now have hierarchical namespaces enabled by default.
• Update client API version to "2020-10-02".

AzureStor 3.5.2

• Use the vctrs package to parse paged output from the REST API. This should resolve many issues with list_blobs in particular.
• Add support for recursive deleting of non-empty subdirectories in blob and file storage.
• Fix a bug when listing files in an empty ADLS filesystem (#100).
• Fix passing a timeout parameter to the REST API (#105).

AzureStor 3.5.1

• Fix for changed behaviour in readr 2.0.0, where readr::read_delim now automatically closes an input connection (#95).
• Change .onLoad to keep any currently set global options when AzureStor is loaded, rather than resetting them (#96).

AzureStor 3.5.0

• Add support for generating a service SAS. There is a new S3 generic get_service_sas with methods for az_storage and storage_endpoint objects, and a similar R6 method for az_storage objects. See ?sas for more information.
• Fix storage_save_rds and storage_load_rds to handle compression correctly. In particular, storage_load_rds should now correctly load files saved with saveRDS (#83).
• Fix a bug that caused list_blobs to fail when leases were present.
• Use a raw connection instead of a raw vector when calling readr::read_delim and read_csv2. This works around an issue introduced in readr 1.4.0 (#85, #86).
• Update client API version to "2020-04-08". In particular, this allows specifying resource_type="d" when creating a service or user delegation SAS for blob storage.
• Add an optional service argument to storage_endpoint, to specify the service in question: blob, file, ADLS2, queue or table. This allows use of the generic endpoint function with URLs that don't fit the usual pattern where the service is part of the hostname, eg custom domain names, IP addresses, etc.
• For the same reason, remove the warning about an unrecognised endpoint URL from blob_endpoint, file_endpoint and adls_endpoint.

AzureStor 3.4.1

• Fix blob lease code that has been broken since launch (#77, #78).
• Set the default starting time for a generated SAS to the recommended 15 minutes before the current time, to allow for clock skew.
• Fix list_adls_files to allow for a missing last-modified-date column (#82).
• Add a vignette "How to enable AAD authentication for a storage account" that describes the steps involved in this task. Note that this vignette is meant mostly for administrators, not regular users.

AzureStor 3.4.0

• Add helper functions to transfer data in commonly-used formats. These work via connections and so do not create temporary files on disk.
• storage_save_rds/storage_load_rds
• storage_save_rdata/storage_load_rdata
• storage_write_delim/storage_read_delim (for tab-delimited files)
• storage_write_csv/storage_read_csv
• storage_write_csv2/storage_read_csv2

AzureStor 3.3.0

• ADLS, file and block blob uploads gain the option to compute and store the MD5 hash of the uploaded file, via the put_md5 argument to upload_adls_file, upload_azure_file and upload_blob.
• Similarly, downloads gain the option to verify the integrity of the downloaded file using the MD5 hash, via the check_md5 argument to download_adls_file, download_azure_file and download_blob. This requires that the file's Content-MD5 property is set.
• Add support for uploading to append blobs, which are a type of blob optimized for append operations. They are useful for data that is constantly growing, but should not be modified once written, such as server logs. See ?upload_blob for more details.
• Add support for the Azurite and Azure SDK storage emulators. To connect to the endpoint, use the service-specific functions blob_endpoint and queue_endpoint (the latter from the AzureQstor package), passing the full URL including the account name: blob_endpoint("http://127.0.0.1:10000/myaccount", key="mykey"). The warning about an unrecognised endpoint can be ignored. See the linked pages for full details on how to authenticate to the emulator. Note that the Azure SDK emulator is no longer being actively developed; it's recommended to use Azurite.
• Add a 10-second fuzz factor to the default starting datetime for a generated SAS, to allow for differences in clocks.
• More fixes to the directory handling of list_blobs().
• All uploads now include the Content-MD5 header in the HTTP requests, as an error-checking mechanism.
• Change maintainer email address.

AzureStor 3.2.3

• Fix file transfers with filenames containing non-ASCII characters on Windows.
• Require httr >= 1.4.0 for proper support of HEAD requests (reported by @scottporter).

AzureStor 3.2.2

• Extended support for directories in blob storage. Note that since blob storage doesn't have true directories, there are some warts to be aware of; see ?blob for more details.
• Implement non-recursive directory listings for list_blobs, thanks to @cantpitch.
• Fixes to the directory detection logic of list_blobs.
• Implement create_blob_dir and delete_blob_dir.
• Remove broken implementation for recursive deleting of subdirectory contents for file storage.

AzureStor 3.2.1

• Internal changes to handle differences in how table storage returns error messages.
• Update tests for R 4.0.

AzureStor 3.2.0

• Update client API versions to "2019-07-07".
• Basic support for the new file storage permissions API. When uploading files, they will be created with default filesystem parameters: "inherit" permissions, "now" creation/modified datetimes, and unset attributes. This has no impact on blob and ADLSgen2.
• Remove a redundant API call to set the Content-Type after a blob or file storage upload.
• list_storage_containers and related methods will now check for a continuation marker to avoid returning prematurely (thanks to @StatKalli for reporting and providing a fix).
• Extended support for generating an account SAS (which should not be confused with using one):
• Add get_account_sas S3 generic, with methods for az_storage resource objects and client endpoints. The az_storage$get_account_sas R6 method now simply calls the S3 method.
• Generating the SAS now uses internal R code, rather than making an API call. The resulting SAS should also work with azcopy.
• Add support for generating a user delegation SAS. Note that using a user delegation SAS has always worked.
• New S3 generics get_user_delegation_key and get_user_delegation_sas, with methods for az_storage objects and blob endpoints. Similar R6 methods added for az_storage objects.
• New revoke_user_delegation_keys generic and methods to invalidate all user delegation keys for a storage account (and all SAS's generated with those keys).
• See ?sas for more information.
• The silent argument for call_azcopy now uses the azure_storage_azcopy_silent system option for its default value, falling back to FALSE if this is unset.
• Bug fixes for internal functions.

AzureStor 3.1.1

• Expose sign_request as a generic, dispatching on the endpoint class. This is to allow for the fact that table storage uses a different signing scheme to the other storage services.
• Fix a bug in list_adls_files that could result in an error with large numbers of files.
• Add a timeout argument to call_storage_endpoint that sets the number of seconds to wait for an API call.
• Fix authentication logic for retrying failed requests.

AzureStor 3.1.0

Significant user-visible changes

• Enhanced support for AzCopy:
• Calling AzCopy from the various upload/download methods can now use existing authentication credentials without needing to login separately. Note that AzCopy only supports SAS and OAuth authentication, not access key.
• call_azcopy now uses the processx package under the hood, which is a powerful and flexible framework for running external programs from R. The interface is slightly changed: rather than taking the entire commandline as a single string, call_azcopy now expects each AzCopy commandline option to be an individual argument. See ?call_azcopy for examples of the new interface.
• Recursive file transfers with AzCopy is now supported.

Other changes

• New storage_file_exists generic to check for file existence, which dispatches to blob_exists, azure_file_exists and adls_file_exists for the individual storage types.
• Move AAD token validity check inside the retry loop in call_storage_endpoint; this fixes a bug where the token could expire during a long transfer.
• Default destination arguments now work for file transfer generics as well.

AzureStor 3.0.1

• Uploading with ADLS now sets the Content-Type property correctly.
• Fixes to support blob/ADLS interoperability, which has just gone GA.
• In list_blobs and list_adls_files, check that a field exists before trying to modify it (works around problem of possibly inconsistent response from the endpoint).
• Allow passing a SAS with a leading ? (as generated by the Azure Portal and Storage Explorer) to the client functions.
• Fix some bugs in multidownload_blob.
• The az_storage$get_*_endpoint() methods now support passing an AAD token for authentication.

AzureStor 3.0.0

Significant user-visible changes

• Substantial enhancements to multiple-file transfers (up and down):
• These can now accept a vector of pathnames as the source and destination arguments.
• Alternatively, for a wildcard source, add the ability to recurse through subdirectories. Any directory structure in the source will be reproduced at the destination.
• Related to the above: the file transfer methods can now create subdirectories that are specified in their destination argument. For ADLS and blob uploading this happens automatically; for Azure file uploading it requires a separate API call which can be slow, so is optional.
• The default destination directory when transferring files (not connections) is now the (remote) root for uploading, and the (local) current directory for downloading.
• Significant changes to file storage methods for greater consistency with the other storage types:
• The default directory for list_azure_files is now the root, mirroring the behaviour for blobs and ADLSgen2.
• The output of list_azure_files now includes the full path as part of the file/directory name.
• Add recursive argument to list_azure_files, create_azure_dir and delete_azure_dir for recursing through subdirectories. Like with file transfers, for Azure file storage this can be slow, so try to use a non-recursive solution where possible.
• Make output format for list_adls_files, list_blobs and list_azure_files more consistent. The first 2 columns for a data frame output are now always name and size; the size of a directory is NA. The 3rd column for non-blobs is isdir which is TRUE/FALSE depending on whether the object is a directory or file. Any additional columns remain storage type-specific.
• New get_storage_metadata and set_storage_metadata methods for managing user-specified properties (metadata) for objects.
• Revamped methods for getting standard properties, which are now all methods for get_storage_properties rather than having specific functions for blobs, files and directories.
• Creating a service-specific endpoint (file_endpoint, blob_endpoint, adls_endpoint) with an invalid URL will now warn, instead of throwing an error. This enables using tools like Azurite, which use a local address as the endpoint. Calling storage_endpoint with an invalid URL will still throw an error, as the function has no way of telling which storage service is required.

Other changes

• Remove the warning about ADLSgen2 not supporting shared access signatures (SAS).
• Background process pool functionality has been moved to AzureRMR. This removes code duplication, and also makes it available for other packages that may benefit.
• Only display the file transfer progress bar in an interactive session.
• Export do_container_op and call_storage_endpoint to allow direct calls to the storage account endpoint.
• Fix S3 dispatching bugs in copy_url_to_storage and multicopy_url_to_storage.
• A NULL download destination will now actually return a raw vector as opposed to a connection, matching what the documentation says.

AzureStor 2.1.1

• Correctly handle ADLSgen2 and file storage listings with more than 5000 files.
• Fix a bug in confirmation prompts. On R >= 3.5, prompts will now use utils::askYesNo; as a side-effect, Windows users who are using RGUI.exe will see a popup dialog box instead of a message in the terminal.

AzureStor 2.1.0

• Update client API versions to "2018-11-09".
• Fix bug with blob uploading using azcopy.
• Add copy_url_to_blob function, for directly copying a HTTP[S] URL to blob storage. The corresponding generic is copy_url_to_storage, with a method for blob containers (only).

AzureStor 2.0.2

• By default, HTTP(S) requests to the storage endpoint will now be retried on encountering a network error. To change the number of retries, call options(azure_storage_retries=N) where N >= 0. Setting this option to zero disables retrying.
• Downloading now proceeds in blocks, much like uploading. The default block size is set to 16MB for blob and ADLSgen2, and 4MB for file storage. While this reduces the throughput slightly (basically there is at least one extra REST call involved), it allows retrying a failed transfer on a per-block basis rather than having to redownload the entire file.
• Also display the progress bar for uploads. The command to enable/disable the progress bar is now options(azure_storage_progress_bar=TRUE|FALSE).

AzureStor 2.0.1

• Display a progress bar when downloading single files. To turn this on or off, call options(azure_dl_progress_bar=TRUE|FALSE).
• Fix upload_to_url/download_from_url bugs introduced in last update.

AzureStor 2.0.0

Significant user-visible changes

• Support authentication via Azure Active Directory tokens for blob and ADLSgen2 storage.
• Support uploading and downloading to in-memory R objects, without having to create a temporary file. Uploading can be done with src a rawConnection or textConnection object. For downloading, if dest is NULL, the downloaded data is returned as a raw vector, or if dest is a rawConnection, in the connection object. See the examples in the documentation.
• Implement parallel file transfers using a background pool of R processes. This can significantly speed up transfers when working with multiple small files.
• Experimental support for using the Microsoft AzCopy commandline utility to perform file transfers. Set the argument use_azcopy=TRUE in any upload or download function to call AzCopy rather than relying on internal R code. The call_azcopy function also allows you to run AzCopy with arbitrary arguments. Requires AzCopy version 10.
• New generics for storage operations:
• storage_container, create_storage_container, delete_storage_container, list_storage_containers for managing containers (blob containers, file shares, ADLSgen2 filesystems)
• storage_upload, storage_download, storage_multiupload, storage_multidownload for file transfers
• list_storage_files, create_storage_dir, delete_storage_dir, delete_storage_file for managing objects within a container

Other changes

• Add ADLS upload/download support to upload_to_url and download_from_url.
• Set default blocksize for upload_azure_file to 4MB, the maximum permitted by the API (#5).
• Allow resource group and subscription accessor methods to work when AzureStor is not on the search path.

AzureStor 1.0.0

• Submitted to CRAN

AzureStor 0.9.0

• Moved to cloudyr organisation

AzureStor documentation built on May 25, 2022, 9:11 a.m.