Content Uploader

The Box Content Uploader UI Element allows developers to embed an upload widget in their desktop or mobile web application. Users can select files or use drag and drop to upload. Large files will be uploaded with the API.

Installation

Box UI elements either through NPM or the Box CDN.

Authentication

The UI Elements are designed in an authentication agnostic way so whether you are using UI Elements for users who have Box accounts (Managed Users) or non-Box accounts (App Users), UI Elements should work out of the box. The reason for this is that UI Elements only expect a “token” to be passed in for authentication, and Box provides two different ways to generate tokens - OAuth and JWT.

Learn about selecting an authentication method

Demo

Uploader

Uploader as popup

Access Token

These demos may not fully function until you provide a valid access token. For testing purposes, you can use your temporary developer token. This will need to be updated under the JS tab in the demo.

API

const { ContentUploader } = Box;
const uploader = new ContentUploader();

/**
 * Shows the content uploader.
 *
 * @public
 * @param {String} folderId - Folder ID to upload to.
 * @param {String} accessToken - Box API access token.
 * @param {Object|void} [options] - Optional options.
 * @return {void}
 */
uploader.show(folderId, accessToken, options);

/**
 * Hides and clears HTML for the uploader.
 *
 * @public
 * @return {void}
 */
uploader.hide();

/**
 * Adds an event listener to the content uploader.
 * Listeners should be added before calling show()
 * so no events are missed.
 *
 * @public
 * @param {String} eventName Name of the event.
 * @param {Function} listener Callback function.
 * @return {void}
 */
uploader.addListener(eventName, listener);

/**
 * Removes an event listener from the content uploader.
 *
 * @public
 * @param {String} eventName Name of the event.
 * @param {Function} listener Callback function.
 * @return {void}
 */
uploader.removeListener(eventName, listener);

/**
 * Removes all event listeners from the content uploader.
 *
 * @public
 * @return {void}
 */
uploader.removeAllListeners();

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
folderId	String	Box Folder ID. This will be the ID of the folder from which you want files to be uploaded to. If you want to use the Box All Files folder, then use 0 as the folderId.
accessToken	String	Box API access token to use. This should have upload access to the folder above.
options	Object	Optional options. See below for details.

Options

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
container	String	document.body	CSS selector of the container in which the content uploader should be placed. Calling hide() will clear out this container.
sharedLink	String		Shared link URL, required if folder is shared and the access token doesn’t belong to an owner or collaborator of the file.
sharedLinkPassword	String		Shared link password, required if shared link has a password.
onClose	Function		Callback function for ‘Close’ button, which will appear when there are no files to upload or when all uploads are complete. If this option is set to null the button will not appear.
modal	Object		When the modal attribute is specified, then the content uploader will not be created in-place. Instead a button will be created in the container and clicking this button will launch the content uploader in a modal popup. See below for the modal options.
size	String	undefined	Indicates to the content uploader to fit within a small or large width container. Value can be absent or one of small or large. If absent the UI Element will adapt to its container and automatically switch between small width or large width mode.
isTouch	Boolean	Defaults to the browser and device’s default touch support	Indicates to the content explorer that it’s is being rendered on a touch enabled device.
fileLimit	Number	100	The maximum number of files that can be uploaded at once. If more than fileLimit files are selected for upload, any beyond the first fileLimit files will not be included for uploaded. A warning message will be shown in the footer when this happens.
requestInterceptor	Function		Function to intercept requests. For an example see . Our underlying XHR library is axios.js and we follow a .
responseInterceptor	Function		Function to intercept responses. For an example see . Our underlying XHR library is axios.js and we follow a .

Modal Options

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
buttonLabel	String		Label for the button
buttonClassName	String	Box Blue Button	CSS class to decorate the button
modalClassName	String		CSS class to decorate the modal popup content
overlayClassName	String		CSS class to decorate the modal popup overlay

Events

Event Name	Event Data	Description
close		Will be fired when ‘Close’ button is clicked.
complete	Array<File>	Will be fired when all uploads in the current view are complete. Event data will be an array of File Object.
upload	File	Fired when a single file is successfully uploaded. Event data will be a File Object.
error	Object	Fired when a single file has an upload error. Event data will be an object with properties file from the File Web API and the error object error.

Scopes

If your application requires the end user to only be able to access a subset of the Content Uploader functionality, you can use to appropriately downscope the Access Token to a resulting token that has the desired set of permissions, and can thus, be securely passed to the end user client initializing the Content Uploader.

Below are a set of UI Element-specific scopes to go alongside Downscoping. These allow developers to enable/disable UI controls on the Content Uploader by configuring the appropriate scopes on the downscoped token. To learn more, see .

Base Scope

Scope Name	Permissions granted
base_upload	Allows upload into the folder specific under “resource” of the Token Exchange request.

Sample Scenarios

Scenario	Scopes
User wants to upload files to a Box folder	base_upload