Set Container ACL

• 8 minutes to read
• Contributors
  • 
  • 

The Set Container ACL operation sets the permissions for the specified container. The permissions indicate whether blobs in a container may be accessed publicly.

Beginning with the 2009-09-19 version, the container permissions provide the following options for managing container access:

• Full public read access: Container and blob data can be read via anonymous request. Clients can enumerate blobs within the container via anonymous request, but cannot enumerate containers within the storage account.

• Public read access for blobs only: Blob data within this container can be read via anonymous request, but container data is not available. Clients cannot enumerate blobs within the container via anonymous request.

• No public read access: Container and blob data can be read by the account owner only.

  Set Container ACL also sets a stored access policy for use with shared access signatures. For more information, see Establishing a Stored Access Policy.

  All public access to the container is anonymous, as is access via a shared access signature.

Request

The Set Container ACL request may be constructed as follows. HTTPS is recommended. Replace myaccount with the name of your storage account:

Emulated Storage Service URI

When 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:

For more information, see Using the Azure Storage Emulator for Development and Testing.

URI Parameters

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

Request Headers

The following table describes required and optional request headers.

This operation also supports the use of conditional headers to execute the operation only if a specified condition is met. For more information, see Specifying Conditional Headers for Blob Service Operations.

Request Body

To specify a stored access policy, provide a unique identifier and access policy in the request body for the Set Container ACL operation.

The SignedIdentifier element includes the unique identifier, as specified in the Id element, and the details of the access policy, as specified in the AccessPolicy element. The maximum length of the unique identifier is 64 characters.

The Start and Expiry fields must be expressed as UTC times and must adhere to a valid ISO 8061 format. Supported ISO 8061 formats include the following:

• YYYY-MM-DD

• YYYY-MM-DDThh:mmTZD

• YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD

• YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.fffffffTZD

  For the date portion of these formats, YYYY is a four-digit year representation, MM is a two-digit month representation, and DD is a two-digit day representation. For the time portion, hh is the hour representation in 24-hour notation, mm is the two-digit minute representation, ss is the two-digit second representation, and fffffff is the seven-digit millisecond representation. A time designator T separates the date and time portions of the string, while a time zone designator TZD specifies a time zone.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>  
<SignedIdentifiers>  
  <SignedIdentifier>   
    <Id>unique-64-character-value</Id>  
    <AccessPolicy>  
      <Start>start-time</Start>  
      <Expiry>expiry-time</Expiry>  
      <Permission>abbreviated-permission-list</Permission>  
    </AccessPolicy>  
  </SignedIdentifier>  
</SignedIdentifiers>  

Sample Request

Request Syntax:  
PUT https://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer?restype=container&comp=acl HTTP/1.1  

Request Headers:  
x-ms-version: 2011-08-18  
x-ms-date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:42:49 GMT  
x-ms-blob-public-access: container  
Authorization: SharedKey myaccount:V47F2tYLS29MmHPhiR8FyiCny9zO5De3kVSF0RYQHmo=  

Request Body:  
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>  
<SignedIdentifiers>  
  <SignedIdentifier>   
    <Id>MTIzNDU2Nzg5MDEyMzQ1Njc4OTAxMjM0NTY3ODkwMTI=</Id>  
    <AccessPolicy>  
      <Start>2009-09-28T08:49:37.0000000Z</Start>  
      <Expiry>2009-09-29T08:49:37.0000000Z</Expiry>  
      <Permission>rwd</Permission>  
    </AccessPolicy>  
  </SignedIdentifier>  
</SignedIdentifiers>  

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 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.

Sample Response

Response Status:  
HTTP/1.1 200 OK  

Response Headers:  
Transfer-Encoding: chunked  
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 22:42:55 GMT  
ETag: "0x8CB171613397EAB"  
Last-Modified: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 22:42:55 GMT  
x-ms-version: 2011-08-18  
Server: Windows-Azure-Blob/1.0 Microsoft-HTTPAPI/2.0  

Authorization

Only the account owner may call this operation.

Remarks

Only the account owner may access resources in a particular container, unless the owner has specified that container resources are available for public access by setting the permissions on the container, or has issued a shared access signature for a resource within the container.

When you set permissions for a container, the existing permissions are replaced. To update the container's permissions, call Get Container ACL to fetch all access policies associated with the container, modify the access policy that you wish to change, and then call Set Container ACL with the complete set of data to perform the update.

Enabling Anonymous Public Access on Container Data

To enable anonymous public read access on container data, call Set Container ACL with the x-ms-blob-public-access header set to container or blob. To disable anonymous access, call Set Container ACL without specifying the x-ms-blob-public-access header.

If you set x-ms-blob-public-access to blob, clients can call the following operations anonymously:

• Get Blob

• Get Blob Properties

• Get Blob Metadata

• Get Block List (for the committed block list only)

• Get Page Ranges

  If you set x-ms-blob-public-access to container, clients can call the following operations anonymously:

• The blob access operations listed above.

• Get Container Properties

• Get Container Metadata

• List Blobs

  Establishing Container-Level Access Policies

  A stored access policy can specify the start time, expiry time, and permissions for the shared access signatures with which it's associated. Depending on how you want to control access to your container or blob resource, you can specify all of these parameters within the stored access policy, and omit them from the URL for the shared access signature. Doing so permits you to modify the associated signature's behavior at any time, as well as to revoke it. Or you can specify one or more of the access policy parameters within the stored access policy, and the others on the URL. Finally, you can specify all of the parameters on the URL. In this case, you can use the stored access policy to revoke the signature, but not to modify its behavior. See specifying a Establishing a Stored Access Policy for more information about establishing access policies.

  Together the shared access signature and the stored access policy must include all fields required to authenticate the signature. If any required fields are missing, the request will fail. Likewise, if a field is specified both in the shared access signature URL and in the stored access policy, the request will fail with status code 400 (Bad Request).

  At most five separate access policies can be set for a given container at any time. If more than five access policies are passed in the request body, then the service returns status code 400 (Bad Request).

  A shared access signature can be issued on a container or a blob regardless of whether container data is available for anonymous read access. A shared access signature provides a greater measure of control over how, when, and to whom a resource is made accessible.

See Also

Restrict Access to Containers and Blobs
Delegating Access with a Shared Access Signature
Create and Use a Shared Access Signature
Establishing a Stored Access Policy
Get Container ACL
Authentication for the Azure Storage Services
Status and Error Codes
Blob Service Error Codes