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Box Reader

Note

This adapter is in preview and is available on Striim Developer only. See Striim Developer for more information.

Box.com is a cloud-based content management system with collaboration, security, analytics and other features related to files and information. The Box Reader is a data integration tool that enables users to extract and access data from Box, providing seamless connectivity to various objects within the Box ecosystem.

Feature summary

Feature

Supported?

Notes

Objects

Standard objects

✓

Custom objects

✓

Authentication

Basic authentication

Username and password

OAuth authentication

✓

Manual configuration based

Custom authentication methods

Not all methods may be supported

Operations

Automated mode

✓

Initial load

✓

Pull-based incremental load

✓

Push-based incremental load

Automated pipeline

Governance

Connection profile

Sherlock AI

Sentinel AI

Schema handling

Initial schema creation

✓

Works with supported targets

Schema evolution

Setup

Wizard template

Flow Designer

✓

Striim TQL

✓

Runtime

Resilience/recovery

✓

Parallel execution

Metrics

✓

Standard metrics

Supported authentication

The Box Reader supports OAuth authentication. Creating a connection requires registering a custom application in Box, setting necessary API permissions such as file/folder access, generating a client ID and client secret, and obtaining an access token and refresh token.

To create a connection using OAuth authentication:

  1. Register the application in Box:

    1. Go to the Box Developer Console.

    2. Create a Custom App with OAuth 2.0 as the authentication method.

    3. Fill out app details (name, description, etc.).

  2. Set the required API permissions (for example, root_readwrite for file/folder access). See OAuth 2.0 scopes.

  3. Generate the client ID and client secret.

    1. Go to App Settings in the Box Developer Console.

    2. Copy the Client ID and Client Secret.

  4. Obtain the access token and refresh token by using the OAuth 2.0 authorization code flow:

    1. Redirect the user to Box’s authorization URL.

    2. Get the authorization code after the user consents.

    3. Exchange it for an access token and refresh token via the Box token endpoint.

Supported objects

The following are the supported objects for reading from Box:

  • Bookmarks

  • Collaborations

  • Collections

  • Comments

  • FileMetadataInstances

  • Files

  • FileVersions

  • Folders

  • Groups

  • LegalPolicies

  • Memberships

  • MetadataTemplates

  • RecentItems

  • SharedItems

  • SignRequests

  • TaskAssignments

  • Tasks

  • TrashedItems

  • UserEvents

  • Users

Box Reader properties

Property

Type

Default value

Notes

Client ID

String

Client ID of the custom app registered in Box

Client secret

Password

Client secret of the custom app registered in Box.

Connection pool size

Integer

20

Specifies the maximum number of active connections.

Exclude tables

String

A list of tables excluded from read operations. Typically used to create a list of exceptions when the Tables property includes wildcards. Misconfiguration of the Tables and Exclude Tables properties can cause "Invalid table names" errors.

Incremental load marker

String

The incremental load marker is a unique incremental column in each object used for incremental load. When no marker is specified, tables are resynced at each polling interval.

Specify the name of the column that contains the start position value. This column must meet the following criteria:

  • It should have an integer or timestamp data type (for example, a creation timestamp or an employee ID).

  • The values must be unique and continuously increasing to ensure proper incremental reading.

Migrate schema

Boolean

False

Only available in Initial Load or Automated mode. Set to True to enable initial schema migration, which propagates the object schema from the source to the target.

Mode

Select list:

  • Automated mode

  • Initial load

  • Incremental load

Automated

Automated mode applies incremental updates to objects that support incremental load and performs full resyncs for objects that do not support incremental load.

Polling interval

Integer

5m

Specifies an interval as an integer followed by a unit. Supported units are days (d), hours (h), minutes (m), or seconds (s). The reader polls the source at the specified interval.

Refresh token

Password

An OAuth 2.0 refresh token.Use the value generated while creating the token.

Start Position

String

%=-1

Value of the incremental load marker that defines the initial reading position.

Tables

String

A semicolon-delimited (;) list of objects to read from the source. Supports the % wildcard. Misconfiguration of the Tables and Exclude Tables properties can cause "Invalid table names" errors. Do not modify this property when recovery is enabled for the application.

Thread pool count

Integer

10

The number of parallel running threads. The default value of zero specifies single-threaded operation.

When the value of the thread pool counter is higher than the connection pool size, large data ingestion operations can cause the app to halt. Since best performance is achieved when using one thread for each table being synced, increasing the size of the connection pool to match the number of threads in use is a performance best practice.