Using Box.com Pragmatically

Overview:  In the SaaS Document Management space Box.com is a competitor to SharePoint Online.  A medium size client request recently came into integrate with a client and deliver files into Box.com, as it is something I have not done before I was eager to see how easy it is.

Requirement:

1. I merely need to create folders within the clients tenant if needed and drop files into specific folders from a scheduled job that runs every 5 minutes.  
2. Box.com has API similar to SharePoint CSOM to pragmatically work with your Box tenant.   
3. Box.com functionality is specific to Documents so the API is really small and easy to learn.
4. There are multiple ways to pragmatically authenticate to you Box.com tenant, PoC keeps it simple.  Actual must use JWT for the connecting service account.

Implementation Details:
Box.com has several was to problematically connect and to test the API's.  For my PoC I used the Developer Token approach.  We should switch this over to the JWT OAuth approach but for the PoC and working with the API's I used the Developer Token approach.

1. Once you tenant is setup and you have configured your client, set the developer Token that last for 1 hrs as shown in the screen above.
2. Create a new C# console and add the Box C# SDK reference as shown below.

3. You will need to add the Developer Token, Client Secret and ClientId in order to programtically connect from the console.  Below is my app.config.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
    <startup> 
        <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.6.1" />
    </startup>
  <appSettings>
    <add key="ClientId" value="f9y555fiqwqcbv555lst88dmzbxzqa7n"/>
    <add key="ClientSecret" value="CoTT555U7oN555wKF555aPYz5555"/>
    <add key="DeveloperToken" value="TjxJh555ivvW555EE555NTerb555"/>
  </appSettings>
4. Connect to your tenant using Box.com's API's/ SDK

5. Run the Console and the console looks as follows:

6. Code the file upload logic:

Final Thoughts:

• Overall I think Box.com is a good option if you don't already have O365.  It's pretty expensive for a small feature set but it is a valid option for clients.
• The search indexing is ridiculously slow so very hard to build search based solutions using the API.
• Microsoft Flow has connectors for Box.com before developing, check if Flow can meet your migration, moving requirement.

Part 2 of using Box.com programmatically, I discuss using JWT for access.
Troubleshooting Box.com issues