Table Service REST API

This documentation provides a comprehensive reference to the Azure Table service REST API. The Table service is a NoSQL key-attribute store that allows you to store large amounts of unstructured and semi-structured data. The Table service is accessible via anonymous HTTP or HTTPS requests. Developers can query the Table service using the REST API directly, or through Azure SDK libraries available in various languages.

Table Service Operations

The Table service exposes the following operations:

Service Operations

These operations manage the Table service itself and are performed against the storage account endpoint.

Table Operations

These operations manage tables within the Table service.

Common Query Parameters

When querying tables or entities, you can use the following common query parameters:

• $filter: Filters the results to return only entities that satisfy the OData filter expression.
• $select: Specifies the properties to return for each entity.
• $top: Specifies the maximum number of entities to return.
• $orderby: Specifies the order in which entities are returned.

Authentication and Authorization

All requests to the Azure Table service must be authenticated. The primary methods are:

• Shared Key Authentication: Using the storage account name and account key.
• Shared Access Signatures (SAS): Delegated access to specific resources with defined permissions and expiry times.
• Azure Active Directory (Azure AD): Using Azure AD identities for authentication and authorization.

For detailed information on authentication methods, refer to the Azure Storage authentication overview.

Entity Structure

An entity in the Table service is a collection of name-value pairs, similar to a row in a database table. Each entity has the following required properties:

• PartitionKey: Identifies the partition that the entity belongs to. Entities with the same PartitionKey are stored in the same partition.
• RowKey: Uniquely identifies an entity within a partition.
• Timestamp: Automatically managed by the Table service, representing the last modification time of the entity.

In addition to these required properties, an entity can contain up to 62 custom properties, each with a name and a supported data type.

Supported Data Types

The Azure Table service supports the following data types:

• Edm.Binary
• Edm.Boolean
• Edm.Byte
• Edm.DateTime
• Edm.Double
• Edm.Guid
• Edm.Int32
• Edm.Int64
• Edm.String

Example: Querying Entities

The following example shows how to query entities from a table named "Products" that have a PartitionKey of "Electronics" and select only the Name and Price properties.

GET https://<your-storage-account-name>.table.core.windows.net/Products?$filter=PartitionKey eq 'Electronics'&$select=Name,Price HTTP/1.1
Authorization: SharedKey :
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2023 17:48:41 GMT
Accept: application/json;odata=fullmetadata

{
    "value": [
        {
            "PartitionKey": "Electronics",
            "RowKey": "001",
            "Timestamp": "2023-09-29T17:48:41.1234567Z",
            "Name": "Laptop",
            "Price": 1200.50
        },
        {
            "PartitionKey": "Electronics",
            "RowKey": "002",
            "Timestamp": "2023-09-29T17:48:41.7890123Z",
            "Name": "Smartphone",
            "Price": 799.99
        }
    ]
}
            

Best Practices

• Design your PartitionKey to distribute data evenly across partitions for better scalability.
• Use batch operations to improve performance when inserting or updating multiple entities.
• Carefully consider the data types for your properties to optimize storage and query performance.

Get Service Stats

Retrieves the statistics of the Table service. This operation is useful for monitoring the health and performance of your storage account.

HTTP Method: GET

Resource URI: /

GET https://<your-storage-account-name>.table.core.windows.net/ HTTP/1.1
Authorization: SharedKey :
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2023 17:50:00 GMT

Create Table

Creates a new table in the Table service. The table name must be unique within the storage account and follow specific naming conventions (alphanumeric characters and hyphens, cannot start with a number).

HTTP Method: POST

Resource URI: /Tables

Request Body:

{
    "TableName": "MyNewTable"
}