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Access All File/Folder Information via JWT Application

  • May 22, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 61 views

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I am developing a Box app that uses JWT authentication through the Box Java SDK. It needs to be able to access absolutely every file and folder in the enterprise. As I understand it, one way is to add the Service Account that represents the app as a collaborator, but the issue is that I cannot add any collaborators to the root folder, and the folders available in the root folder may change. There is also the api.asUser call, which we've tried using with the Enterprise Admin account, but it turns out they can't see everything, either--in our plain user accounts, we've created Box Notes that appear in /All Files/My Box Notes, but our Admin account can't access this folder at all. Is there any way we can set the permissions to a managed account so that it can see every file and folder, including these notes? Is there a better way for a JWT app to be able to access everything?

 

Thanks so much!

2 replies

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I ran into a similar issue where the Box API user couldn't see the files of the main user. I was able to solve this by clicking the "Perform Actions as Users" option in the JWT configuration and sending the `As-User` tag in the POST/GET headers.


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Thanks for your response!

It seems that we do indeed have to impersonate the owner of a file or folder in order to ensure that we can access its information. Marking this as the solution.