Starting, Stopping, and Clearing the Azure Storage Emulator in C#

If you’re writing code that uses Microsoft Azure Storage blobs, tables, or queues, you can use the storage emulator on Windows for local development — rather than relying on the cloud while developing. And, using the RimDev.Automation.StorageEmulator NuGet package, you can interact with it in C#!

First, install the RimDev.Automation.StorageEmulator NuGet package.

PM> Install-Package RimDev.Automation.StorageEmulator

Now, it’s as simple as:

var automation = new AzureStorageEmulatorAutomation();

automation.Start();

AzureStorageEmulatorAutomation.IsEmulatorRunning(); // should be true

automation.ClearAll();

// Or, clear only certain things:
automation.ClearBlobs();
automation.ClearTables();
automation.ClearQueues();

automation.Stop();

AzureStorageEmulatorAutomation.IsEmulatorRunning(); // should be false

AzureStorageEmulatorAutomation implements IDisposable, too, but it only stops the emulator on dispose if that specific automation instance is what started it:

using (var automation = new AzureStorageEmulatorAutomation())
{
    automation.Start();

    // Work with the running Azure Storage Emulator here.
}

// Outside the scope of the using, if the Azure Storage Emulator was
// started by `automation.Start();` above, then it should be shut down.
// If it was already running, it should remain running.

Closing note

The GitHub repository associated with the RimDev.Automation.StorageEmulator NuGet package is https://github.com/ritterim/automation-storage-emulator.