Using Table Storage

1. Start Locally

Firstly, we need to launch Locally which we can do from a terminal by running:

Once Locally has started, the Locally Dashboard will open automatically:

2. Create a Resource Group

Next we can create the Resource Group to hold the Storage Account:

There's two things to note here:

1. The Azure CLI supports Automatic Configuration, meaning that it can automatically be configured to work against Locally just by prefixing commands with locally run.
2. Locally intentionally uses a different set of locations to Azure as a safety precaution, so that you can be confident you're deploying against Locally rather than regular Azure. You can also configure Locally to use the Azure locations too, but you'll want to be extra sure that you're prefixing commands with locally run when you do.

3. Create the Storage Account

Tables live in a Storage Account, so let's create one:

{
  "name": "sampletables1",
  "provisioningState": "Succeeded",
  "tableEndpoint": "https://sampletables1.table.core.storage.locally:5660/"
}

That table endpoint is served by the Storage Emulator running on your machine.

4. Create a table

Now we can create a table called products:

And check it's there:

NAME
products

5. Insert some entities

The az storage entity commands need the account's connection string. Putting it in AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING means we don't have to pass it to each one:

Every entity needs a PartitionKey and a RowKey. We'll give Price and Stock a type too, so they're stored as numbers rather than strings:

6. Query the table

Let's see everything in the table:

PartitionKey    RowKey      Name               Price    Stock
--------------  ----------  -----------------  -------  -------
garden          hose-01     Garden hose        19.0     0
kitchen         kettle-01   Electric kettle    34.99    12
kitchen         toaster-01  Two-slice toaster  27.5     5

A filter narrows that down on the server. Here we only want the kitchen partition:

RowKey      Name               Stock
----------  -----------------  -------
kettle-01   Electric kettle    12
toaster-01  Two-slice toaster  5

7. Update an entity

The kettles have sold out. A merge only touches the properties we pass, so we can set Stock without resending the rest:

The name and price are still there:

{
  "Name": "Electric kettle",
  "Price": 34.99,
  "Stock": 0
}

Filters work on our own properties too, so we can ask for what's still in stock:

PartitionKey    RowKey      Name               Stock
--------------  ----------  -----------------  -------
kitchen         toaster-01  Two-slice toaster  5

8. Delete an entity

We've stopped selling the garden hose, so let's delete it:

And it's gone from the table:

PartitionKey    RowKey      Name
--------------  ----------  -----------------
kitchen         kettle-01   Electric kettle
kitchen         toaster-01  Two-slice toaster

9. Tidy up

Finally, we can tidy up. To remove just the table, and every entity in it:

Or to remove the Resource Group and everything within it:

Doing this with other tooling

Whilst this guide used the Azure CLI, the Storage Account and its tables work the same way through any of the tooling that Locally supports - Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts and Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/tableServices/tables resources in HashiCorp Terraform or OpenTofu, Pulumi, Bicep or an ARM Template all provision against Locally in the same way.

The same is true of the data plane: hand the connection string to the Azure SDK for .NET, Go or Python and your application reads and writes entities against Locally.

Next steps

To pass messages between parts of your app using the same kind of account, see Storage Queues. If you'd rather use the Table API on Cosmos DB, see Cosmos DB for Table.

Should you encounter any issues, please take a look at the troubleshooting section.

Resource types this guide uses

These are the Azure resource types this guide creates in Locally:

• Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/tableServices/tables
• Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts