title: Download and display a private Azure Blob using ASP MVC
body: <p>I'm using ASP MVC 5 Razor with Microsoft Azure Blob storage. I can successfully upload documents and images to the Blob Storage using MVC but I am struggling to find some MVC examples how to download and display the files.</p>
  
  <p>It would be quite straightforward to do this if the blobs were stored as public files, but I need them to be private.</p>
  
  <p>Can anyone give me any examples or guidance how to achieve this?</p>
  
  <p>I've got some code below that seems to retrieve the Blob, but I'm not sure what to do with it in MVC to actually display it in a browser. </p>
  
  <pre><code>var fullFileName = "file1.pdf";
  var containerName = "default";
  
  // Retrieve storage account from connection string.
  CloudStorageAccount storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["AttachmentStorageConnection"].ConnectionString);
  
  // Create the blob client.
  CloudBlobClient blobClient = storageAccount.CreateCloudBlobClient();
  
  // Retrieve reference to a previously created container.
  CloudBlobContainer container = blobClient.GetContainerReference(containerName);
  
  // Retrieve reference to a blob ie "picture.jpg".
  CloudBlockBlob blockBlob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(fullFileName);
  </code></pre>