Extract metadata

This script extracts metadata details for all the files and folders in any Box folder and saves the result in a CSV spreadsheet for each metadata template.

Prerequisites

Windows

Install the latest version of dotnet core.

MacOS & Linux

Install PowerShell. Run the pwsh command to test the installation.

pwsh

Depending on the directory you are running the command in, the output may differ. For example:

PowerShell 7.2.5
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.

https://aka.ms/powershell
Type 'help' to get help.

PS /Users/user/repos/boxcli/examples>

Box CLI

To use the script, you will need the Box CLI installed and configured. You can get this done by going through our quick start guide.

Configure the script

1. Clone the boxcli GitHub repository and cd into this example's folder or download the files from examples directory.

   git clone https://github.com/box/boxcli.git
   cd boxcli/examples/Metadata\ Extraction/
   

2. Specify the folderID and userID parameters to tell the script which folder to scan, and who is the user running the script.

   [string]$FolderID = "",
   [string]$UserID = "",
   

   If you don't want to specify the parameters directly in the script, you can either pass them as flags or allow the script to prompt you to enter them. A sample command with flags looks as follows:

   ./Metadata-extraction.ps1 -folderId 123456789 -userId 123456789
   

Run the script

1. Run the Powershell command.

   pwsh
   

2. Run the script.

   ./Metadata-extraction.ps1 -folderId 123456789 -userId 123456789
   

   When the script finishes, you will see the following output or a similar one.

   Pulling data from Folder ID: 173961139760
   metadata as user ID: 20718545815
   Reading Item ID: 1016853559790
   Metadata saved to: MetadataTemplate_properties.csv
   

Logging

Logs are stored in a logs folder located in the main folder. You have access to these log files:

• Metadata-extraction_all.txt that contains all log entries.
• Metadata-extraction_errors.txt that contains only errors.