Creating and using the root container for blobs

The Azure Blob service supports a simple two-level hierarchy for blobs. There is a single level of containers, each of which might contain zero or more blobs. Containers might not contain other containers.

In the Blob service, a blob resource is addressed as follows:

http://{account}.blob.core.windows.net/{container}/{blob}

The {account}, {container}, and {blob} parts represent the names of the storage account, container, and blob, respectively.

This addressing convention works for most uses of blobs. In certain situations, we need to place content inside the root space. Microsoft added support for a root container named $root to the Blob service so that it could host content.

Tip

When using Silverlight, the runtime requires that a cross-domain policy file reside at the root of the domain and not beneath a container as would be the case with the standard addressing for blobs. The cross-domain policy file allows a web client to access data from more...