storage-blob-delete-python.md

title	Delete and restore a blob with Python
titleSuffix	Azure Storage
description	Learn how to delete and restore a blob in your Azure Storage account using the Python client library
services	storage
author	stevenmatthew
ms.author	shaas
ms.date	08/12/2024
ms.service	azure-blob-storage
ms.topic	how-to
ms.devlang	python
ms.custom	devx-track-python, devguide-python

Delete and restore a blob with Python

[!INCLUDE storage-dev-guide-selector-delete-blob]

This article shows how to delete blobs using the Azure Storage client library for Python, and how to restore soft-deleted blobs during the retention period.

To learn about deleting a blob using asynchronous APIs, see Delete a blob asynchronously.

[!INCLUDE storage-dev-guide-prereqs-python]

Set up your environment

[!INCLUDE storage-dev-guide-project-setup-python]

Add import statements

Add the following import statements:

:::code language="python" source="~/azure-storage-snippets/blobs/howto/python/blob-devguide-py/blob_devguide_delete_blobs.py" id="Snippet_imports":::

Authorization

The authorization mechanism must have the necessary permissions to delete a blob, or to restore a soft-deleted blob. For authorization with Microsoft Entra ID (recommended), you need Azure RBAC built-in role Storage Blob Data Contributor or higher. To learn more, see the authorization guidance for Delete Blob (REST API) and Undelete Blob (REST API).

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Delete a blob

[!INCLUDE storage-dev-guide-delete-blob-note]

To delete a blob, call the following method:

• BlobClient.delete_blob

The following example deletes a blob:

:::code language="python" source="~/azure-storage-snippets/blobs/howto/python/blob-devguide-py/blob_devguide_delete_blobs.py" id="Snippet_delete_blob":::

If the blob has any associated snapshots, you must delete all of its snapshots to delete the blob. The following example deletes a blob and its snapshots:

:::code language="python" source="~/azure-storage-snippets/blobs/howto/python/blob-devguide-py/blob_devguide_delete_blobs.py" id="Snippet_delete_blob_snapshots":::

To delete only the snapshots and not the blob itself, you can pass the parameter delete_snapshots="only".

Restore a deleted blob

Blob soft delete protects an individual blob and its versions, snapshots, and metadata from accidental deletes or overwrites by maintaining the deleted data in the system for a specified period of time. During the retention period, you can restore the blob to its state at deletion. After the retention period has expired, the blob is permanently deleted. For more information about blob soft delete, see Soft delete for blobs.

You can use the Azure Storage client libraries to restore a soft-deleted blob or snapshot.

How you restore a soft-deleted blob depends on whether or not your storage account has blob versioning enabled. For more information on blob versioning, see Blob versioning. See one of the following sections, depending on your scenario:

• Blob versioning is not enabled
• Blob versioning is enabled

Restore soft-deleted objects when versioning is disabled

To restore deleted blobs when versioning is disabled, call the following method:

• BlobClient.undelete_blob

This method restores the content and metadata of a soft-deleted blob and any associated soft-deleted snapshots. Calling this method for a blob that hasn't been deleted has no effect.

:::code language="python" source="~/azure-storage-snippets/blobs/howto/python/blob-devguide-py/blob_devguide_delete_blobs.py" id="Snippet_restore_blob":::

Restore soft-deleted objects when versioning is enabled

If a storage account is configured to enable blob versioning, deleting a blob causes the current version of the blob to become the previous version. To restore a soft-deleted blob when versioning is enabled, copy a previous version over the base blob. You can use the following method:

• start_copy_from_url

The following code example gets the latest version of a deleted blob, and restores the latest version by copying it to the base blob:

:::code language="python" source="~/azure-storage-snippets/blobs/howto/python/blob-devguide-py/blob_devguide_delete_blobs.py" id="Snippet_restore_blob_version":::

Delete a blob asynchronously

The Azure Blob Storage client library for Python supports deleting a blob asynchronously. To learn more about project setup requirements, see Asynchronous programming.

Follow these steps to delete a blob using asynchronous APIs:

1. Add the following import statements:

   import asyncio
   
   from azure.identity.aio import DefaultAzureCredential
   from azure.storage.blob.aio import BlobServiceClient

2. Add code to run the program using asyncio.run. This function runs the passed coroutine, main() in our example, and manages the asyncio event loop. Coroutines are declared with the async/await syntax. In this example, the main() coroutine first creates the top level BlobServiceClient using async with, then calls the method that deletes the blob. Note that only the top level client needs to use async with, as other clients created from it share the same connection pool.

   :::code language="python" source="~/azure-storage-snippets/blobs/howto/python/blob-devguide-py/blob_devguide_delete_blobs_async.py" id="Snippet_create_client_async":::

3. Add code to delete the blob. The code is the same as the synchronous example, except that the method is declared with the async keyword and the await keyword is used when calling the delete_blob method.

   :::code language="python" source="~/azure-storage-snippets/blobs/howto/python/blob-devguide-py/blob_devguide_delete_blobs_async.py" id="Snippet_delete_blob":::

With this basic setup in place, you can implement other examples in this article as coroutines using async/await syntax.

Resources

To learn more about how to delete blobs and restore soft-deleted blobs using the Azure Blob Storage client library for Python, see the following resources.

Code samples

• View synchronous or asynchronous code samples from this article (GitHub)

REST API operations

The Azure SDK for Python contains libraries that build on top of the Azure REST API, allowing you to interact with REST API operations through familiar Python paradigms. The client library methods for deleting blobs and restoring deleted blobs use the following REST API operations:

• Delete Blob (REST API)
• Undelete Blob (REST API)

[!INCLUDE storage-dev-guide-resources-python]

See also

• Soft delete for blobs
• Blob versioning

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