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Question

Use refresh token with desktop Python script?

  • May 21, 2025
  • 1 reply
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I am using a Python script run from my desktop to update metadata on about 180,000 documents in our Box implementation. I can only let the script run for an hour at a time before my developer key expires. I've been trying to come up with a way to incorporate a refresh token into my script to allow the script to continue running indefinitely. However, all the documentation I've found assumes that the calls to Box are coming from a web application. Does anyone have sample code that will show me how to refresh a developer token using Python on the desktop? Is it even possible?

    1 reply

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    Developer tokens can never be refreshed. They are meant for development/debugging only, and not for production use.

     

    If you wish to refresh, you must go through our auth process. This means doing either 3-leg OAuth2 (if you want real users to be able to use this program), or doing JWT auth with a service account (for a server-side automation) or an app user.

     

    See https://docs.box.com/docs/authentication for a description of these.

     

    Our official Python SDK http://pypi.python.org/pypi/boxsdk supports all of these types of authentication.

     

    When doing 3-leg OAuth2, you must always make use of a web browser to do the initial authentication, even if the application is not a web application.

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