Save document to Box cloud file storage

9 Jan 20248 minutes to read

To save a document to Box cloud file storage, you can follow the steps below

Step 1: Set up a Box developer account and create a Box application

To access Box storage programmatically, you’ll need a developer account with Box. Go to the Box Developer Console, sign in or create a new account, and then create a new Box application. This application will provide you with the necessary credentials Client ID and Client Secret to authenticate and access Box APIs. Before accessing files, you need to authenticate your application to access your Box account. Box API supports OAuth 2.0 authentication for this purpose.

Step 2: Create a Simple Document Editor sample in angular

Follow the instructions provided in this link to create a simple Document Editor sample in angular. This will give you a basic setup of the Document Editor component.

Step 3: Modify the DocumentEditorController.cs File in the Web Service Project

• Create a web service project in .NET Core 3.0 or above. You can refer to this link for instructions on how to create a web service project.

• Open the DocumentEditorController.cs file in your web service project.

• Import the required namespaces at the top of the file:

using Box.V2;
using Box.V2.Auth;
using Box.V2.Config;
using Box.V2.Models;

• Add the following private fields and constructor parameters to the DocumentEditorController class, In the constructor, assign the values from the configuration to the corresponding fields

private IConfiguration _configuration;
public readonly string _accessToken;
public readonly string _clientID;
public readonly string _clientSecret;
public readonly string _folderID;

public DocumentEditorController(IWebHostEnvironment hostingEnvironment, IMemoryCache cache, IConfiguration configuration)
{
  _hostingEnvironment = hostingEnvironment;
  _cache = cache;
   _configuration = configuration;
  _accessToken = _configuration.GetValue<string>("AccessToken");
  _clientID = _configuration.GetValue<string>("ClientID");
  _clientSecret = _configuration.GetValue<string>("ClientSecret");
  _folderID = _configuration.GetValue<string>("FolderID");
}

• Create the SaveToBoxCloud() method to save the downloaded document to Box cloud file storage bucket

[AcceptVerbs("Post")]
[HttpPost]
[EnableCors("AllowAllOrigins")]
[Route("SaveToBoxCloud")]
//Post action for downloading the document

public void SaveToBoxCloud(IFormCollection data)
{
  if (data.Files.Count == 0)
    return;

  IFormFile file = data.Files[0];
  string documentName = this.GetValue(data, "documentName");
  string result = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(documentName);

  // Initialize the Box API client with your authentication credentials
  var auth = new OAuthSession(_accessToken, "YOUR_REFRESH_TOKEN", 3600, "bearer");
  var config = new BoxConfigBuilder(_clientID, _clientSecret, new Uri("http://boxsdk")).Build();
  var client = new BoxClient(config, auth);

  var fileRequest = new BoxFileRequest
  {
    Name = result + "_downloaded.docx",
    Parent = new BoxFolderRequest { Id = _folderID },
  };

  Stream stream = new MemoryStream();
  file.CopyTo(stream);

  var boxFile = await client.FilesManager.UploadAsync(fileRequest, stream);
} 
 
private string GetValue(IFormCollection data, string key)
{
    if (data.ContainsKey(key))
    {
        string[] values = data[key];
        if (values.Length > 0)
        {
            return values[0];
        }
    }
    return "";
}

• Open the appsettings.json file in your web service project, Add the following lines below the existing "AllowedHosts" configuration

{
  "Logging": {
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Information",
      "Microsoft.AspNetCore": "Warning"
    }
  },
  "AllowedHosts": "*",
  "AccessToken": "Your_Box_Storage_Access_Token",
  "FolderID": "Your_Folder_ID",
  "ClientID": "Your_Box_Storage_ClientID",
  "ClientSecret": "Your_Box_Storage_ClientSecret"
}

replace Your_Box_Storage_Access_Token with your actual box access token, and Your_Folder_ID with the ID of the folder in your box storage where you want to perform specific operations. Remember to use your valid box API credentials, as Your_Box_Storage_ClientID and Your_Box_Storage_ClientSecret” are placeholders for your application’s API key and secret.

Step 4: Modify the index File in the Document Editor sample

In the client-side, to export the document into blob the document using saveAsBlob and sent to server-side for saving in Box cloud file storage.

import { Component, OnInit, ViewChild } from '@angular/core';
import {
  DocumentEditorContainerComponent,
  ToolbarService,
} from '@syncfusion/ej2-angular-documenteditor';
@Component({
      selector: 'app-root',
      // specifies the template string for the DocumentEditorContainer component
      template: `<button ejs-button (click)="save()" >Save to Box Cloud</button><ejs-documenteditorcontainer #documenteditor_default serviceUrl="http://localhost:62870/api/documenteditor/" height="600px" style="display:block" (created)="onCreate()" [enableToolbar]=true> </ejs-documenteditorcontainer>`,
      providers: [ToolbarService],
})
export class AppComponent implements OnInit {
  @ViewChild('documenteditor_default')
  public container: DocumentEditorContainerComponent;
  ngOnInit(): void {}

   public save(): void {
        //Export the document as Blob object.
        this.container.documentEditor.saveAsBlob('Docx').then((exportedDocument: Blob) => {
          //Now, save the document where ever you want.
          let formData: FormData = new FormData();
          formData.append('documentName', this.container.documentEditor.documentName);
          formData.append('file', exportedDocument);
          /* tslint:disable */
          let req = new XMLHttpRequest();
          // Replace your running Url here
          req.open(
              'POST',
              'http://localhost:62870/api/documenteditor/SaveToBoxCloud',
              true
          );
          req.onreadystatechange = () => {
              if (req.readyState === 4) {
                  if (req.status === 200 || req.status === 304) {
                      console.log('Saved sucessfully');
                  }
              }
          };
          req.send(formData);
        });
    }
}

The Box.V2.Core NuGet package must be installed in your application to use the previous code example.