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Kenichiro Nakamura
Kenichiro Nakamura

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Query Azure Table Storage with LINQPad6

LINQPad is a world famous LINQ/C# playground which you can install locally (for Windows). There are bunch of out-of-box connectors for various services, including major cloud services, and 3rd party connectors which let you connect many data sources.

One of the connector I try this time is Azure Table storage and I show you how we can query table data.

Prerequisites

Azure Table Storage

Azure Table Storage is a key/value storage which we can store data easily.

Let's create a table and add sample data.

1. Go to Azure Portal and create a storage account, then go to storage explorer.

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2. Right click TABLES and add new table.

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3. Add some data. Or we can use Azure Storage Explorer to upload data from local computer.

4. I added people data from swapi

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Connect to the table from LINQPad

As data is ready, let's connect and query data.

1. Open LINQPad and click Add connection.

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2. Click View more drivers....

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3. Click Install to add the driver, then close. Click Accept if you are prompted to install modules.

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4. Select installed driver and click Next.

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5. Enter name and storage account key, then click OK.

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6. Select connected data source from Connection dropdown.

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That's all.

Query data via LINQ

As name infers, LINQPad lets you query data by using LINQ. Let's try some.

Query a couple of columns from the table.

from c in LINQPadDemoTable select new { c.name, c.birth_year}
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Filter data by a column

from c in LINQPadDemoTable 
where c.birth_year == "19BBY" 
select new { c.name, c.birth_year} 
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Query in C# way

We can also use C# expression.

Query by using .WHERE .SELECT

LINQPadDemoTable
    .Where(x => x.birth_year == "19BBY")
    .Select(x => new { x.name, x.birth_year})
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Parse Json string

We can also use power of NuGet for more complex scenario. The vechies column contains json array string like below.

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We can use Json.NET C# library to parse it.

1. Enter following expression.

LINQPadDemoTable
    .Where(x => x.birth_year == "19BBY")
    .Select(x => new { x.name, x.birth_year, vehicles = JArray.Parse(x.vehicles) })
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2. As it cannot resolve JArray, it shows in red. Right click the pain and select Nuget Package Manager.

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3. Click Add to Query button for Json.NET.

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4. Once added, click Add namespace link.

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5. Now we can execute the query.

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6. Let's further digging into array object. Convert the results to List and query by SelectMany.

LINQPadDemoTable
    .Where(x => x.birth_year == "19BBY").ToList()
    .Select(x => new { x.name, vehicles = JArray.Parse(x.vehicles) })
    .SelectMany(x => x.vehicles, (x, vehicle) => new { x.name, vehicle })
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C# statement/program

LINQPad let you write C# program as well, so if you are interested in this tool, please download and play with it.

Top comments (1)

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Yeison Stiven Builes Uribe

Very helpful article, thank you so much