Create an Azure Blob source connection using the Flow Service API

This tutorial uses the Flow Service API to walk you through the steps to connect Azure Blob (hereinafter referred to as “Blob”) to Adobe Experience Platform.

Getting started

This guide requires a working understanding of the following components of Adobe Experience Platform:

• Sources: Experience Platform allows data to be ingested from various sources while providing you with the ability to structure, label, and enhance incoming data using Platform services.
• Sandboxes: Experience Platform provides virtual sandboxes which partition a single Platform instance into separate virtual environments to help develop and evolve digital experience applications.

The following sections provide additional information that you will need to know in order to successfully create a Blob source connection using the Flow Service API.

Gather required credentials

In order for Flow Service to connect with your Blob storage, you must provide values for the following connection property:

Reading sample API calls

This tutorial provides example API calls to demonstrate how to format your requests. These include paths, required headers, and properly formatted request payloads. Sample JSON returned in API responses is also provided. For information on the conventions used in documentation for sample API calls, see the section on how to read example API calls in the Experience Platform troubleshooting guide.

Gather values for required headers

In order to make calls to Platform APIs, you must first complete the authentication tutorial. Completing the authentication tutorial provides the values for each of the required headers in all Experience Platform API calls, as shown below:

• Authorization: Bearer {ACCESS_TOKEN}
• x-api-key: {API_KEY}
• x-gw-ims-org-id: {IMS_ORG}

All resources in Experience Platform, including those belonging to Flow Service, are isolated to specific virtual sandboxes. All requests to Platform APIs require a header that specifies the name of the sandbox the operation will take place in:

• x-sandbox-name: {SANDBOX_NAME}

All requests that contain a payload (POST, PUT, PATCH) require an additional media type header:

• Content-Type: application/json

Create a connection

A connection specifies a source and contains your credentials for that source. Only one connection is required per Blob account as it can be used to create multiple dataflows to bring in different data.

Create a Blob connection using connection string-based authentication

To create a Blob connection using connection string-based authentication, make a POST request to the Flow Service API while providing your Blob connectionString.

API format

POST /connections

Request

In order to create a Blob connection, its unique connection specification ID must be provided as part of the POST request. The connection specification ID for Blob is 4c10e202-c428-4796-9208-5f1f5732b1cf.

curl -X POST \
    'https://platform.adobe.io/data/foundation/flowservice/connections' \
    -H 'Authorization: Bearer {ACCESS_TOKEN}' \
    -H 'x-api-key: {API_KEY}' \
    -H 'x-gw-ims-org-id: {IMS_ORG}' \
    -H 'x-sandbox-name: {SANDBOX_NAME}' \
    -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    -d '{
        "name": "Azure Blob connection using connectionString",
        "description": "Azure Blob connection using connectionString",
        "auth": {
            "specName": "ConnectionString",
            "params": {
                "connectionString": "DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName={ACCOUNT_NAME};AccountKey={ACCOUNT_KEY}"
            }
        },
        "connectionSpec": {
            "id": "4c10e202-c428-4796-9208-5f1f5732b1cf",
            "version": "1.0"
        }
    }'

Response

A successful response returns details of the newly created connection, including its unique identifier (id). This ID is required to explore your storage in the next tutorial.

{
    "id": "4cb0c374-d3bb-4557-b139-5712880adc55",
    "etag": "\"1700c57b-0000-0200-0000-5e3b3f440000\""
}

Create a Blob connection using shared access signature URI

A shared access signature (SAS) URI allows for secure delegated authorization to your Blob account. You can use SAS to create authentication credentials with varying degrees of access, as a SAS-based authentication allows you to set permissions, start and expiry dates, as well as provisions to specific resources.

To create a Blob connection using shared access signature URI, make a POST request to the Flow Service API while providing values for your Blob sasUri.

API format

POST /connections

Request

curl -X POST \
    'https://platform.adobe.io/data/foundation/flowservice/connections' \
    -H 'Authorization: Bearer {ACCESS_TOKEN}' \
    -H 'x-api-key: {API_KEY}' \
    -H 'x-gw-ims-org-id: {IMS_ORG}' \
    -H 'x-sandbox-name: {SANDBOX_NAME}' \
    -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    -d '{
        "name": "Azure Blob source connection using SAS URI",
        "description": "Azure Blob source connection using SAS URI",
        "auth": {
            "specName": "SasURIAuthentication",
            "params": {
                "sasUri": "https://{ACCOUNT_NAME}.blob.core.windows.net/?sv={STORAGE_VERSION}&st={START_TIME}&se={EXPIRE_TIME}&sr={RESOURCE}&sp={PERMISSIONS}>&sip=<{IP_RANGE}>&spr={PROTOCOL}&sig={SIGNATURE}>"
            }
        },
        "connectionSpec": {
            "id": "4c10e202-c428-4796-9208-5f1f5732b1cf",
            "version": "1.0"
        }
    }'

Response

A successful response returns details of the newly created connection, including its unique identifier (id). This ID is required to explore your storage in the next tutorial.

{
    "id": "4cb0c374-d3bb-4557-b139-5712880adc55",
    "etag": "\"1700c57b-0000-0200-0000-5e3b3f440000\""
}

Next steps

By following this tutorial, you have created a Blob connection using APIs and a unique ID was obtained as part of the response body. You can use this connection ID to explore cloud storages using the Flow Service API or ingest Parquet data using the Flow Service API.