Stop Azure Tables treating strings as octal values

Question

We have defined an Azure Table object with a string property that we are storing a random 6 digit code in:

SampleTable : TableEntity {

  public SampleTable (string partitionKey, string rowKey, string randomCode){
    PartitionKey = partitionKey;
    RowKey = rowKey;
    RandomCode = randomCode;
  }

  public string RandomCode {get; set;}
}

Looking at the table structure that is created in Azure Tables, the RandomCode is stored as a string.

If we create a model with the randomcode set to 034120 Storage Explorer shows the stored value correctly as 034120, however when we retrieve the value back using:

TableOperation retrieveOperation = TableOperation
                                     .Retrieve<SampleTable>(partitionKey, rowKey);

// Execute the retrieve operation.
TableResult retrievedResult = Table.Execute(retrieveOperation);

var result = retrievedResult.Result as SampleTable;

The value of RandomCode is 102510 (the Octal representation of 34,120).

Is there any way to force Azure Tables to treat our string properties as strings regardless of the contents? At the moment we're looking to force our random codes to start with 1-9, but this seems rather redundant.

As an interesting point, testing other options shows that storing a value starting 0x assumes the value is a hexadecimal and returns the decimal version of the value, as a string. I might possibly understand this if the model treated the value as an int, but we're treating everything as strings.

Answer 1

As far as I know, Azure table storage service and Azure Storage Client Library do not actively convert a string value to octal value. According to your description and code, I create a sample to reproduce the issue, the code works fine on my side. You could refer to the sample code to check what’s the difference with your code.

Create SampleTable class

public class SampleTable : TableEntity
{

    public SampleTable(string partitionKey, string rowKey, string randomCode)
    {
        PartitionKey = partitionKey;
        RowKey = rowKey;
        RandomCode = randomCode;
    }

    public SampleTable() { }

    public string RandomCode { get; set; }
}

Create table and insert an entity

CloudStorageAccount storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(
    CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("StorageConnectionString"));

CloudTableClient tableClient = storageAccount.CreateCloudTableClient();


CloudTable table = tableClient.GetTableReference("SampleTable");
table.CreateIfNotExists();

SampleTable st = new SampleTable("p001", "pr1", "034120");

TableOperation insertOperation = TableOperation.Insert(st);

table.Execute(insertOperation);

Check entity in storage explorer

Retrieve a single entity

string partitionKey = "p001";
string rowKey = "pr1";
TableOperation retrieveOperation = TableOperation.Retrieve<SampleTable>(partitionKey, rowKey);


TableResult retrievedResult = table.Execute(retrieveOperation);

var result = retrievedResult.Result as SampleTable;

string txt = string.Format("RandomCode: {0}", result.RandomCode.ToString());

If we create a model with the randomcode set to 034120

Please share us the code you are using to create the model.