Hi,

I'm trying to programmatically download a file shared by a different Box account. The file is shared publicly, I can download it from a browser without entering any credentials or logging in.

But when I try the same via API by calling sharedItems.get, I'm getting shared_link=null. If I call getDownloadURL or getReadStream by file id, I get a 404 error. Tried via Node SDK and Postman, same result.

My guess: it's something wrong with permissions. I've tried using a developer token, also tried enterprise auth via a Box SDK config file, which includes clientID, clientSecret, private key and enterpriseID — same result. My app in Box developer console has all possible permissions (as far as I can tell).

Result of sharedItems.get:

{

  type: 'file',

  id: (...),

  file_version: (...),

  sequence_id: (...),

  etag: (...),

  sha1: (...),

  name: (...),

  description: '',

  size: (...),

  path_collection: { total_count: 0, entries: n] },

  created_at: (...),

  modified_at: (...),

  trashed_at: null,

  purged_at: null,

  content_created_at: (...),

  content_modified_at: (...),

  created_by: (...),

  modified_by: (...),

  owned_by: (...),

  shared_link: null,

  parent: null,

  item_status: 'active'

}

(note that it returns id, but no shared_link)

Result of files.getDownloadURL:
Error: Unexpected API Response 404 Not Found | (...)] not_found - Could not find the specified resource

Result of files.getReadStream:
Error: Unexpected API Response I404 Not Found | (...)] not_found - Could not find the specified resource

To recap: I'm getting the file ID from sharedItems.get, but cannot download it by id after that. shared_link field is null.

I'm close to just giving up on Box API altogether and making a bot that runs headless Chrome to download this file using a browser. Appreciate any help.

Thank you.