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Hi. My use case is quite simple but having difficulty finding appropriate steps around it. There is some other organization, say A, whose selected content I want to download via box API. I am not a part of that organization but a different one. 

 

What is the simplest way to go around doing it? I have read lots of question in the forums about it and the one option which seems to be the most simple is that the other organization can make the selected content which I want to download sharable to my user account. Then I can create a Custom App on my account, authenticate as the user who has the files shared to him/her and then use the box file API to download it. Is that correct and the simplest way?

Is there any other way to download that selected content that doesn't require us to create a new Custom App. I read that there is another method where they can create a separate custom app on their side with selected properties and then share those credentials with us. But that was not really clear. I would be very thankful if you could also attach some helpful articles related to that. 

Please guide. Thanks!



Hi  !


 


Thanks for coming to the Box Developer Forums! I understand that you'd like to be able to use Box's API to download content which is not owned within your Box enterprise, and I'll be able to help provide some guidance for you around accomplishing this goal.


 


First, I'd like to offer that the easiest way to accomplish small tasks such as this would be to utilize the Box CLI instead of the API (https://github.com/box/boxcli). Using the CLI, you could make a short command line call to download a file that's been shared with a user in your Box enterprise, or you could make a singular call to download a batch of files that have been shared with a user in your Box enterprise (https://github.com/box/boxcli/blob/master/docs/files.md).


 


If you're not interested in using the CLI and would prefer to use API, you can either create your own app to make the calls or you can be given access to another user's app to make the calls; however, in any of the above cases, you'll need to make the calls as a user in Box that has access to download the files you wish to download. If you don't have any experience using Box API, I'd recommend starting here: https://developer.box.com/guides/tooling/postman/quick-start/


 


As I mentioned above, you will either need to make the calls as a user who is collaborated on the content which is owned by the other enterprise, or the calls can be made from an app that was created by the other enterprise. 


 


This is a rather broad topic, so I'm going to give you a few general references that you will need in order to put these calls together below. Hope this helps, and thanks for reaching out on the Box Developer Forum!


 


https://developer.box.com/guides/authentication/user-types/


https://developer.box.com/reference/resources/file/


https://developer.box.com/reference/get-files-id-content/


https://developer.box.com/guides/api-calls/types-and-formats/


https://developer.box.com/reference/resources/collaboration/


 


 


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