Set Container Metadata

Article
11/07/2023

The Set Container Metadata operation sets one or more user-defined name-value pairs for the specified container.

Request

The Set Container Metadata request may be constructed as follows. We recommend that you use HTTPS. Replace myaccount with the name of your storage account:

Method	Request URI	HTTP version
`PUT`	`https://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer?restype=container&comp=metadata`	HTTP/1.1

Emulated storage service request

When you're making a request against the emulated storage service, specify the emulator hostname and Blob service port as 127.0.0.1:10000, followed by the emulated storage account name:

Method	Request URI	HTTP version
`PUT`	`http://127.0.0.1:10000/devstoreaccount1/mycontainer?restype=container&comp=metadata`	HTTP/1.1

For more information, see Use the Azurite emulator for local Azure Storage development.

URI parameters

You can specify the following additional parameters in the request URI:

Parameter	Description
`timeout`	Optional. The `timeout` parameter is expressed in seconds. For more information, see Set time-outs for Blob service operations.

Request headers

The required and optional request headers are described in the following table:

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.
`x-ms-lease-id: <ID>`	Optional, version 2012-02-12 and later. If it's specified, `Set Container Metadata` succeeds only if the container's lease is active and matches this ID. If there's no active lease or the ID doesn't match, 412 (Precondition Failed) is returned.
`x-ms-meta-name:value`	Optional. A name-value pair to associate with the container as metadata. Each call to this operation replaces all existing metadata that's attached to the container. To remove all metadata from the container, call this operation with no metadata headers. Note: As of version 2009-09-19, metadata names must adhere to the naming rules for C# identifiers.
`x-ms-client-request-id`	Optional. Provides a client-generated, opaque value with a 1-kibibyte (KiB) character limit that's recorded in the logs when logging is configured. We highly recommend that you use this header to correlate client-side activities with requests that the server receives. For more information, see Monitor Azure Blob Storage.

This operation also supports the use of conditional headers to set container metadata only if a specified condition is met. For more information, see Specify conditional headers for Blob service operations.

Request body

None.

Sample request

Request Syntax:  
PUT https://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer?restype=container&comp=metadata HTTP/1.1  
  
Request Headers:  
x-ms-version: 2011-08-18  
x-ms-date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 22:50:32 GMT  
x-ms-meta-Category: Images  
Authorization: SharedKey myaccount:Z5043vY9MesKNh0PNtksNc9nbXSSqGHueE00JdjidOQ=

Response

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

Status code

A successful operation returns status code 200 (OK).

For more 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 header	Description
`ETag`	The ETag for the container. If the request version is 2011-08-18 and later, the ETag value is enclosed in quotation marks.
`Last-Modified`	Returns the date and time when the container was last modified. The date format follows RFC 1123. For more information, see Represent date/time values in headers. Any operation that modifies the container or its properties or metadata updates the last-modified time, including setting the container's permissions. Operations on blobs don't affect the last-modified time of the container.
`ms-request-id`	Uniquely identifies the request that was made and can be used to troubleshoot the request. For more information, see Troubleshoot API operations.
`x-ms-version`	Indicates the Blob service version that was used to execute the request. This header is returned for requests that were made against version 2009-09-19 and later.
`Date`	A UTC date/time value that's generated by the service, which indicates the time when the response was initiated.
`Access-Control-Allow-Origin`	Returned if the request includes an `Origin` header and cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) is enabled with a matching rule. This header returns the value of the origin request header if there's a match.
`Access-Control-Expose-Headers`	Returned if the request includes an `Origin` header and CORS is enabled with a matching rule. Returns the list of response headers that are to be exposed to the client or issuer of the request.
`Access-Control-Allow-Credentials`	Returned if the request includes an `Origin` header and CORS is enabled with a matching rule that doesn't allow all origins. This header is set to `true`.
`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's present in the request and the value contains no more than 1,024 visible ASCII characters. If the `x-ms-client-request-id` header isn't present in the request, it won't be present in the response.

Response body

None.

Authorization

Authorization is required when calling any data access operation in Azure Storage. You can authorize the Set Container Metadata operation as described below.

Azure Storage supports using Microsoft Entra ID to authorize requests to blob data. With Microsoft Entra ID, you can use Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) to grant permissions to a security principal. The security principal may be a user, group, application service principal, or Azure managed identity. The security principal is authenticated by Microsoft Entra ID to return an OAuth 2.0 token. The token can then be used to authorize a request against the Blob service.

To learn more about authorization using Microsoft Entra ID, see Authorize access to blobs using Microsoft Entra ID.

Permissions

Listed below are the RBAC action necessary for a Microsoft Entra user, group, or service principal to call the Set Container Metadata operation, and the least privileged built-in Azure RBAC role that includes this action:

Azure RBAC action: Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/blobServices/containers/write
Least privileged built-in role: Storage Blob Data Contributor

To learn more about assigning roles using Azure RBAC, see Assign an Azure role for access to blob data.

A shared access signature (SAS) provides secure delegated access to resources in a storage account. With a SAS, you have granular control over how a client can access data. You can specify what resource the client may access, what permissions they have to those resources, and how long the SAS is valid.

The Set Container Metadata operation supports supports authorization using an account SAS.

When Shared Key access is disallowed for the storage account, an account SAS token will not be permitted on a request to Blob Storage. To learn more, see Understand how disallowing Shared Key affects SAS tokens.

Account SAS

An account SAS is secured with the storage account key. An account SAS delegates access to resources in one or more of the storage services. All of the operations available via a service or user delegation SAS are also available via an account SAS.

The following table indicates the signed resource type and signed permissions to specify when delegating access:

Operation	Signed service	Signed resource type	Signed permission
Set Container Metadata	Blob (b)	Service (s)	Write (w)

To learn more about the account SAS, see Create an account SAS.

Remarks

Calling the Set Container Metadata operation overwrites all existing metadata that's associated with the container. It's not possible to modify an individual name-value pair.

You can also set metadata for a container when it's created.

Calling Set Container Metadata updates the ETag and Last-Modified-Time properties for the container. If the request was made by using version 2011-08-18, the updated ETag is enclosed in quotation marks.

Billing

Pricing requests can originate from clients that use Blob Storage APIs, either directly through the Blob Storage REST API, or from an Azure Storage client library. These requests accrue charges per transaction. The type of transaction affects how the account is charged. For example, read transactions accrue to a different billing category than write transactions. The following table shows the billing category for Set Container Metadata requests based on the storage account type:

Operation	Storage account type	Billing category
Set Container Metadata	Premium block blob Standard general-purpose v2	Other operations
Set Container Metadata	Standard general-purpose v1	Write operations

To learn about pricing for the specified billing category, see Azure Blob Storage Pricing.