Using Azurite emulator of Azure storage

[jmargeta]

Hi, what is the best way to run django-storages with Azurite storage emulator?

After an update from a very old version (1.9.1), I have discovered that the AZURE_EMULATED_MODE setting is now ignored and the connection to the emulator no longer works out of the box.

Even when setting up the necessary custom domain and credentials, the client uses a hard-coded value use_custom_domain=False: https://github.com/jschneier/django-storages/blob/c7662485b02890efe967ae216a648762f7d8a172/storages/backends/azure_storage.py#L184C1-L188C36

class AzureStorage(BaseStorage):
    ...
    @property
    def service_client(self):
        if self._service_client is None:
            self._service_client = self._get_service_client(use_custom_domain=False)
        return self._service_client

There is custom_client which hard-codes use_custom_domain=True and that logic then works also with the emulator.

Based on that, I have two alternatives which work: To override the client property individually:

class AzureStaticStorage(AzureStorage):
    client = AzureStorage.custom_client
    ...

Or globally:

if AZURE_EMULATED_MODE:
    from storages.backends.azure_storage import AzureStorage
    AzureStorage.client = AzureStorage.custom_client

This does not feel like the ideal solution.

Is there a reason for abandoning the emulated storage flag or not determining the use_custom_domain based on whether the custom domain is provided?

Otherwise, what would be the best way to tell Django to use the custom_client by default instead of client?

Thanks for the great library!