Azure Table storage Unsupported Types

Package	Release	Pre-release
TableStorage.UnsupportedTypes

CI	Status	Platform(s)	Framework(s)	Test Framework(s)
AppVeyor		Windows	nestandard2.0	netcoreapp3.1

Azure Table storage supports a limited set of data types (namely byte[], bool, DateTime, double, Guid, int, long and string). Unsupported Types allows to store unsupported data types with some limitations:

• Your Type should be serializable / deserializable to and from JSON using Json.NET
• The entity should fit in 1 MB

This is distributed via a NuGet package but the implementation is so simple that you can just copy the classes into your own solution if that works better for you.

🚨 I'm using the legacy WindowsAzure.Storage NuGet package, let me know if there is interest in using Microsoft.Azure.Cosmos.Table instead.

How it works

1. Your TableEntity should inherit from UnsupportedTypesTableEntity
2. Decorate the properties you want to store with the UnsupportedTypeAttribute
3. That's all

public class Unimportant
{
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }
}

public class UnsupportedTypesTestTableEntity : UnsupportedTypesTableEntity
{
    [UnsupportedType]
    public Unimportant VeryImportant { get; set; }
}

There is a console application in src/SampleConsole demonstrating Unsupported Types:

• You'll need the Azure storage emulator 5.5 or later
  • Alternatively you can use a storage account and modify AzureTableStorage:ConnectionString accordingly in appsettings.json

Output of the console

Entity stored in storage

Limitations

You will not be able to filter the entities using the unsupported types. You'll need to materialize them first and then use LINQ to Objects.

Potential improvements

Cache properties

Each read and write to Azure Table storage will trigger the use of Reflection. This could be improved by caching the unsupported properties, in this case the scan would happen once per application lifetime.

Running locally

Pre-requisites

• .NET Core SDK v3.1.300 and higher

Initial setup on Windows

.\bootstrap.ps1

Initial setup on Linux / OS X

./bootstrap.sh

Run build script

dotnet cake build.cake