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box.py - Python client for Box

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Usage example:

from box import BoxClient
from StringIO import StringIO

client = BoxClient('user_token')
client.upload_file('hello.txt', StringIO('hello world'))

Supported features

  • File download, upload and overwrite.
  • Delete (including permanent delete), copy, move & restore
  • Directory enumeration
  • Link share
  • User info fetch
  • Thumbnails
  • Search
  • Events + longpoll
  • Collaborations

Support

Installation

$ pip install box.py

Usage

Uploading a file

metadata = client.upload_file('hello.txt', StringIO('hello world'))
>>> metadata['id']
'123456'

Downloading a file

response = client.download_file('123456')
>>> response.text
'hello world'

Deleting a file

client.delete_file('123456')

Copying a file

metadata = client.copy_file('123456', new_filename='goodbye.txt')
>>> metadata['id']
'654321'

Copying a folder

metadata = client.copy_folder('361015', destination_parent='510163', new_foldername='goodbye')
>>> metadata['id']
'149148'

Receiving & waiting for events

position = client.long_poll_for_events() # this will block until there are new events
events = client.get_events(position)

Authenticating a user

from box import start_authenticate_v2, finish_authenticate_v2
url = start_authenticate_v2('my_api_key')
>>> url
'https://www.box.com/api/oauth2/authorize?response_type=code&client_id=my_api_key'

Next, redirect the user to url. Once he accepts, a redirect will be issued to the page defined in your developer settings. The "code" is passed as a GET argument.

http_get_params = ... # for django, this would be request.GET
response = finish_authenticate_v2('my_client_id', 'my_client_secret', http_get_params['code'])
>>> response
{ 'access_token': '1111111111111111',
  'restricted_to': [],
  'token_type': 'bearer',
  'expires_in': 4056,
  'refresh_token': '999998988888877766665555444433332221111'
}


client = BoxClient(response['access_token'])

Token refresh

The v2 security API introduces a mandatory token refresh mechanism (according to Box, this was done to mitigate the impact of token theft). Essentially, every so often, the token needs to be "refreshed", which involves hitting a Box endpoint with a special "refresh token", which returns new access & refresh tokens that replace the old ones. For more details, see here: http://developers.box.com/oauth/

The refresh dance can be performed explicitly as following:

from box import refresh_v2_token
response = refresh_v2_token('my_client_id', 'my_client_secret', 'my_refresh_token')
>>> response
{ 'access_token': '2222222222222222',
  'restricted_to': [],
  'token_type': 'bearer',
  'expires_in': 4056,
  'refresh_token': '7777777777777777'
}

This can also be done automatically by the client, and you can register a callback that will notify you about the new tokens:

def token_refreshed_callback(access_token, refresh_token):
	"""
	this gets called whenever the tokens have been refreshed. Should persist those somewhere.
	"""
	print 'new access token: ' + access_token
	print 'new refresh token: ' + refresh_token


from box import CredentialsV2
credentials = CredentialsV2('my_access_token', 'my_refresh_token', 'my_client_id', 'my_client_secret', refresh_callback=token_refreshed_callback)
client = BoxClient(credentials)

client.download_file(....) # if the tokens have expired, they will be refreshed automatically and token_refreshed_callback would get invoked