I know that a couple of topics on this topic have been started, but as far as I can tell, they have not given any conclusive answers/solutions to this challenge (please correct me if I am wrong).
Let me start by saying that I am not a programmer, but that I am a digital media producer/creator and have been developing an in-house content management system for years in order to collaborate with my team members which are often spread out across the globe, and to present results in real-time to my clients, who often need or want to be part of the creative process.
I currently work with a programmer who is based in India and who has been handling all of the development on this digital-media CMS for the past few years...I know enough about working with programmers/developers to know what to ask for and often even help out with ideas that they might not have thought of, but more on a conceptual level, rather than the actual coding parts, of course.
About 5 years ago I chose Crocodocs to handle the upload and management of non-image/video files-types (I use the Vimeo API for those), and was somewhat disconcerted about its deprecation. It was working quite adequately for me, and I currently don't have the type of funds to deal with major construction on my code-base. I did, however, just manage to get my Indian developer to carve out the time it took to move me to the new Box API (he told me it took me 30hrs to do so, and what can I really say about that, either way...I have to trust him).
The question I now have (excuse the lengthy introduction) is this:
> is there a working method to retrieve a preview thumbnail of *all* supported file-types that is part of the Box API 2.0.
> if not, what file-types can present a thumbnail?
> if there is a non Box API method, would anyone be so kind and point me/us the correct way? (maybe some sort of clever ffmpeg screen-cap method that can generate a URL-based thumbnail with a certain delay, which would be better than having to do so manually...or something of that sort)
thanks in advance for your input and for reading this far!
Getting thumbnails for *all* file types...is it possible?
I did see this post by Priyajeet, which - to me - looks like it's a solution to my problem, but my developer tells me that this is only for image/video thumbnails...is this really true? it appears to me that the OP had exactly the same problem as I do, and then said that this is exactly what he was looking for...so which is it? does this solution cover *all* file-types or not?
by Priyajeet:
Working example
Hello ,
if you check here https://developer.box.com/reference#get-a-thumbnail-for-a-file you will find a disclaimer clearly stating "Thumbnails are only available for images and video file formats. You can also specify min=max in order to guarantee the thumbnail size requested."
Said that, there's a pretty brand new (maybe some weeks?) feature called representations. You can see that the list of supported formats is much longer now. Check here: https://developer.box.com/reference-edit/fetching-a-thumbnail-representation
Documents
'doc', 'docx', 'gdoc', 'gsheet', 'gslide', 'gslides', 'odp', 'ods', 'odt', 'pdf', 'ppt', 'pptx', 'rtf', 'wpd', 'xls', 'xlsm', 'xlsx', 'key', 'pages', 'numbers'
Images
'ai', 'bmp', 'gif', 'eps', 'jpeg', 'jpg', 'png', 'ps', 'psd', 'svg', 'tif', 'tiff', 'dcm', 'dicm', 'svs', 'tga'
Audio
'aac', 'aifc', 'aiff', 'amr', 'au', 'flac', 'm4a', 'mp3', 'ogg', 'ra', 'wav', 'wma'
Video
'3g2', '3gp', 'avi', 'm2v', 'm2ts', 'm4v', 'mkv', 'mov', 'mp4', 'mpeg', 'mpg', 'ogg', 'mts', 'qt', 'wmv'
Regards,
thank you, LoCortes, for this clarification!
like I said, I am not a developer, so forgive me for asking:
what is the difference between thumbnails and representations, if I may ask?
but I did forward your reply to my developer and hope that he can make sense of this and make it work...the file-types listed in that link go a looong way (if not all the way) toward what I was hoping could be done.
as far as I am concerned, your link provides the answer I was looking and hoping for...I just hope that my developer can actually make it work for retrieving the thumbnails we need.
Hello ,
basically, the thumbnails was the simple representation for images and videos, as your developer said, that BOX has provided always.
Lately, a weeks ago, they have created this concept of representation that goes much further. "Representations" allow to convert to PDF on the fly certain types of documents, generate thumbnails from others, retrieve single pages of a document with hundreds of them... so they allow now, not only retrieve the documents the way they are but do some processing to them.
Actually, I discovered it because we have the need of converting to PDF and to retrieve single pages and was a great surprise.
I hope this helps you to solve the issue you were facing 😉
Regards
that does sound exciting and like what I was hoping would be possible.
Since my developer told me that he sees no record or documentation of such possibilities, would you be so kind as to give me a URL where these new representations are documented? a search for "representation" in the developer area comes up empty, curiously.
so by the sound of it, not only are thumbnails possible for all of the listed file-types but much more than that? (on the fly conversion and extractions from multi-page docs?)
thanks so much for you help with this LoCortes, much appreciated!
Hello ,
all the info is in the box reference URL 🙂
I shared the specific one to the representations: https://developer.box.com/reference-edit/fetching-a-thumbnail-representation
That is the API reference website where everything is explained.
Regards
when I send this link to my developer, all he replies with is "please understand in that link they just said it supports but they didn't explain the way".
could it be that he is simply unable to understand how to use the Box API properly? I don't understand what other info he is looking for or what other info is necessary to implement these representations.
I know your role is not to educate other programmers, LoCortes, but should I be looking for another developer to help me with this? I have a feeling that mine has reached his limit.
again, I don't expect anyone here to tell my developer how exactly to do it, but he sent me this photo of what he has done, and asked whether I can post it to see whether anyone can see anything wrong with this.
My gut-feeling, like I said, is that he has reached his limit and that I may have to go to Upwork and look for someone more familiar with the Box API...he is an inexpensive PHP guy that kinda hacks his way through my requirements, but maybe this is where this buck stops:
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