BoxSDK (Python) - Search for files of certain extension

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mcha54

• April 15, 2019 23:15

Is it possible to use client.search() to get a list of all files/file IDs of a certain file_extension? Is there a way to pass something into query, since its required, that will accomplish that?

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  jcleblanc

  • April 19, 2019 09:29

  Hi ,

   

  With the way the search endpoint works, you won't be able to set wildcard search params (or a null value) within the query itself. This article gives some good insights into how it functions, specifically under the "Wildcard searches" section.

   

  So, there are a few options that might work. If you want to search for common file names / file name parts (where there is a common naming convention), you can do something like: 

   

  search_term = 't'
  type = 'file'
  
  content = client.search().query(search_term, result_type=type, file_extensions=['pdf', 'txt'])

   

  The other option would be to use the Get Folder Items endpoint. This will return all items within a given folder, which you can then loop through and filter for any without a matching extension.

   

  I know it's not an ideal scenario, but hopefully one of those should get you what you need.

   

  Thanks,

  Jon

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  dblx

  • September 03, 2019 13:02

  Apologies if this is the wrong thread for this question, but it was the closest one I could find for the issue of searching for a particular file extension. My university recently migrated everything to Box, so I can't use the Windows file explorer search. I need to search all my folders for my matlab function and script files (*.m). How do I do that in Box drive? Searching "*.m" appears to literally return everything with an "m" in it, which is pretty much everything among my thousands and thousands of files.

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