Put Block List¶

The Put Block List operation writes a blob by specifying the list of block IDs that make up the blob. To be written as part of a blob, a block must have been successfully written to the server in a prior Put Block operation.

You can call Put Block List to update a blob by uploading only those blocks that have changed, then committing the new and existing blocks together. You can do this by specifying whether to commit a block from the committed block list or from the uncommitted block list, or to commit the most recently uploaded version of the block, whichever list it may belong to.

Request¶

The Put Block List request may be constructed as follows. HTTPS is recommended. Replace myaccount with the name of your storage account, and example.com with your endpoint’s domain name or IP address.

Method	Request URI	HTTP Version
PUT	`https://myaccount.blob.example.com/mycontainer/myblob?comp=blocklist`	HTTP/1.1

URI Parameters¶

The following additional parameters may be specified on the request URI.

Parameter	Description
`timeout`	Optional. The `timeout` parameter is expressed in seconds. For more information, see Setting Timeouts for Blob Service Operations.

Request Headers¶

The following table describes required and optional request headers.

Request Header	Description
`Authorization`	Required. Specifies the authorization scheme, account name, and signature. For more information, see Authorize requests to Azure Storage.
`Date` or `x-ms-date`	Required. Specifies the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) for the request. For more information, see Authorize requests to Azure Storage.
`x-ms-version`	Required for all authorized requests. Specifies the version of the operation to use for this request. For more information, see Versioning for the Azure Storage services.
`Content-Length`	Required. The length of the request content in bytes. This header refers to the content length of the list of blocks, not of the blob itself.
`Content-MD5`	Optional. An MD5 hash of the request content. This hash is used to verify the integrity of the request content during transport. If the two hashes do not match, the operation fails with error code 400 (BadRequest). This header is associated with the request content, and not with the content of the blob itself.
`x-ms-content-crc64`	Not applicable (Not supported in Zenko version 1.2.1).
`x-ms-blob-cache-control`	Optional. Sets the blob’s cache control. If specified, this property is stored with the blob and returned with a read request. If this property is not specified with the request, then it is cleared for the blob if the request is successful.
`x-ms-blob-content-type`	Optional. Sets the blob’s content type. If specified, this property is stored with the blob and returned with a read request. If the content type is not specified, then it is set to the default type, `application/octet-stream`.
`x-ms-blob-content-encoding`	Optional. Sets the blob’s content encoding. If specified, this property is stored with the blob and returned with a read request. If this property is not specified with the request, then it is cleared for the blob if the request is successful.
`x-ms-blob-content-language`	Optional. Set the blob’s content language. If specified, this property is stored with the blob and returned with a read request. If this property is not specified with the request, then it is cleared for the blob if the request is successful.
`x-ms-blob-content-md5`	Optional. An MD5 hash of the blob content. Note that this hash is not validated, as the hashes for the individual blocks were validated when each was uploaded. The Get Blob operation returns the value of this header in the Content-MD5 response header. If this property is not specified with the request, then it is cleared for the blob if the request is successful.
`x-ms-meta-name:value`	Optional. User-defined name-value pairs associated with the blob. Metadata names must adhere to the naming rules for C# identifiers.
`x-ms-lease-id`	Not applicable (Zenko version 1.2.1 does not support leasing).
`x-ms-client-request-id`	Optional. Provides a client-generated, opaque value with a 1 KB character limit that is recorded in the analytics logs when storage analytics logging is enabled. Using this header is highly recommended for correlating client-side activities with requests received by the server. For more information, see About Storage Azure Storage Analytics Logging and Windows Azure Logging: Using Logs to Track Storage Requests.
`x-ms-blob-content-disposition`	Optional. Sets the blob’s Content-Disposition header. The Content-Disposition header field conveys additional information about how to process the response payload, and can be used to attach additional metadata. For example, if set to `attachment`, it indicates that the user-agent should not display the response, but instead show a Save As dialog. The response from the Get Blob and Get Blob Properties operations includes the content-disposition header.
`x-ms-access-tier`	Not applicable (Not supported in Zenko version 1.2.1).

This operation also supports the use of conditional headers to commit the block list only if a specified condition is met. For more information, see Specifying conditional headers for Blob service operations.

Request Body¶

In the request body, you can specify which block list the Blob service should check for the requested block. In this way you can update an existing blob by inserting, replacing, or deleting individual blocks, rather than re-uploading the entire blob. Once you’ve uploaded the block or blocks that have changed, you can commit a new version of the blob by committing the new blocks together with the existing blocks that you wish to keep.

To update a blob, you can specify that the service should look for a block ID in the committed block list, in the uncommitted block list, or in the uncommitted block list first and then in the committed block list. To indicate which approach to use, specify the block ID within the appropriate XML element within the request body, as follows:

Specify the block ID within the Committed element to direct the Blob service to search only the committed block list for the named block. If the block is not found in the committed block list, it is not written as part of the blob, and the Blob service return status code 400 (Bad Request).
Specify the block ID within the Uncommitted element to direct the Blob service to search only the uncommitted block list for the named block. If the block is not found in the uncommitted block list, it is not written as part of the blob, and the Blob service returns status code 400 (Bad Request).
Specify the block ID within the Latest element to direct the Blob service to search the uncommitted block list first. If the block is found in the uncommitted list, that version of the block is the latest and is written to the blob. If the block is not found in the uncommitted list, the service searches the committed block list for the named block and, if it finds it, writes that block to the blob.

The request body for this version of Put Block List uses following XML format:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<BlockList>
  <Committed>first-base64-encoded-block-id</Committed>
  <Uncommitted>second-base64-encoded-block-id</Uncommitted>
  <Latest>third-base64-encoded-block-id</Latest>
  ...
</BlockList>

Sample Request

To demonstrate Put Block List, assume you have uploaded three blocks that you now wish to commit. The following example commits a new blob by indicating that the latest version of each block listed should be used. It’s not necessary to know whether these blocks have already been committed.

Request Syntax:
PUT https://myaccount.blob.example.com/mycontainer/myblob?comp=blocklist HTTP/1.1

Request Headers:
x-ms-date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:17:43 GMT
x-ms-version: 2011-08-18
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Authorization: SharedKey myaccount:DJ5QZSVONZ64vAhnN/wxcU+Pt5HQSLAiLITlAU76Lx8=
Content-Length: 133

Request Body:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<BlockList>
  <Latest>AAAAAA==</Latest>
  <Latest>AQAAAA==</Latest>
  <Latest>AZAAAA==</Latest>
</BlockList>

Next, assume you want to update the blob with the following changes:

A new block with ID ANAAAA==. This block must first be uploaded with a call to Put Block and will appear in the uncommitted block list until the call to Put Block List.
An updated version of the block with ID AZAAAA==. This block must first be uploaded with a call to Put Block and will appear in the uncommitted block list until the call to Put Block List.
Removal of the block with the ID AAAAAA==. Given that this block is not included in the next call to Put Block List, the block will effectively be removed from the blob.

The following example shows the call to Put Block List that updates the blob:

Request Syntax:
PUT https://myaccount.blob.example.com/mycontainer/myblob?comp=blocklist HTTP/1.1

Request Headers:
x-ms-date: Wed, 31 Aug 2009 00:17:43 GMT
x-ms-version: 2011-08-18
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Authorization: SharedKey myaccount:DJ5QZSVONZ64vAhnN/wxcU+Pt5HQSLAiLITlAU76Lx8=
Content-Length: 133

Request Body:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<BlockList>
  <Uncommitted>ANAAAA==</Uncommitted>
  <Committed>AQAAAA==</Committed>
  <Uncommitted>AZAAAA==</Uncommitted>
</BlockList>

Response¶

The response includes an HTTP status code and a set of response headers.

Status Codes¶

A successful operation returns status code 201 (Created).

For information about status codes, see Status and Error Codes.

Response Headers¶

The response for this operation includes the following headers. The response may also include additional standard HTTP headers. All standard headers conform to the HTTP/1.1 protocol specification.

Response	Descriptions
`ETag`	The entity tag contains a value that the client can use to perform conditional `GET/PUT` operations by using the `If-Match` request header. The ETag value will be in quotes.
`Last-Modified`	The date/time that the blob was last modified. The date format follows RFC 1123. For more information, see Representation of date/time values in headers. Any operation that modifies the blob, including an update of the blob’s metadata or properties, changes the blob’s last-modified time.
`Content-MD5`	This header is returned so that the client can check for message content integrity. This header refers to the content of the request, meaning, in this case, the list of blocks, and not the content of the blob itself.
`x-ms-content-crc64`	Not applicable (Not supported in Zenko version 1.2.1).
`x-ms-request-id`	This header uniquely identifies the request that was made and can be used for troubleshooting the request. For more information, see Troubleshooting API Operations.
`x-ms-version`	Indicates the version of the Blob service used to execute the request.
`Date`	A UTC date/time value generated by the service that indicates the time at which the response was initiated.
`x-ms-request-server-encrypted: true/false`	The value of this header is set to `true` if the contents of the request are successfully encrypted using the specified algorithm, and `false` otherwise.
`x-ms-encryption-key-sha256`	Not applicable (Not supported in Zenko version 1.2.1).
`x-ms-client-request-id`	This header can be used to troubleshoot requests and corresponding responses. The value of this header is equal to the value of the `x-ms-client-request-id` header if it is present in the request, and the value is at most 1024 visible ASCII characters. If the `x-ms-client-request-id` header is not present in the request, this header will not be present in the response.

Sample Response¶

Response Status:
HTTP/1.1 201 Created

Response Headers:
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
x-ms-content-crc64: 77uWZTolTHU
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:17:44 GMT
ETag: â0x8CB172A360EC34Bâ
Last-Modified: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:17:43 GMT
x-ms-version: 2011-08-18
Server: Windows-Azure-Blob/1.0 Microsoft-HTTPAPI/2.0

Authorization¶

This operation can be called by the account owner and by anyone with a Shared Access Signature that has permission to write to this blob or its container.

Remarks¶

The Put Block List operation enforces the order in which blocks are to be combined to create a blob.

The same block ID can be specified more than one time in the list of blocks. If a block ID is specified more than one time, it will represent the range of bytes in each of those locations in the block list for the final committed blob. If a block ID appears more than once in the list, both instances of the block ID must be specified within the same block list. In other words, both instances must be specified within the Committed element, the Uncommitted element, or the Latest element.

With Put Block List, you can modify an existing blob by inserting, updating, or deleting individual blocks, without uploading the whole blob again. You can specify block IDs from both the current committed block list and the uncommitted block list to create a new blob or update the content of an existing blob. In this way you can update a blob by specifying a few new blocks from the uncommitted block list, and the rest from the committed block list, which are already part of the existing blob.

If a block ID is specified in the Latest element, and the same block ID exists in both the committed and uncommitted block lists, Put Block List commits the block from the uncommitted block list. If the block ID exists in the committed block list but not in the uncommitted block list, then Put Block List commits the block from the committed block list.

Each block can be a different size, up to a maximum of 100 MB. The maximum size of a block blob is therefore slightly more than 4.75 TB (100 MB X 50,000 blocks). If you attempt to commit more than 50,000 blocks, the service returns status code 400 (Block List Too Long). The service also returns additional information about the error in the response, including the maximum number of blocks permitted.

The maximum number of uncommitted blocks that may be associated with a blob is 100,000, and the maximum size of the uncommitted block list is about 9.5 TB.

Calling Put Block List to update an existing blob overwrites the blob’s existing properties and metadata. You can use the conditional request headers to perform the operation only if a specified condition is met.

If the Put Block List operation fails due to a missing block, you must upload the missing block.

Any uncommitted blocks will be garbage collected if there are no successful calls to Put Block or Put Block List on the blob within a week following the last successful Put Block operation. If Put Blob is called on the blob, any uncommitted blocks are garbage-collected.