Box Releases Box Developer Edition

Box has released closed beta of Box Developer Edition, a new way to build on the Box platform.

The Box Developer Edition offers a new functionality where app users will no longer have to create their own Box accounts to use an application. App Auth uses the JSON Web Token (JWT) authentication architecture to establish a trusted connection with Box, allowing an application to provision and manage a new type of Box account that removes the friction of multiple logins for users or the difficulty of managing service accounts.

- An independent, developer-owned Box instance, with full Box enterprise functionality, dedicated to an app.

- A new user and authentication model that makes it easy to create new Box users for an application offering the ability for developers to own the users, the content, and the authentication.

- All the capabilities a developer needs when working with commodity cloud storage including full text search, content encryption, advanced permissions, secure collaboration, and compliance.

To use App Auth and App Users developers will first need to create an account and an application using the Box Content API. Box’s new App Auth feature allows an application to authenticate directly to Box using a JWT grant replacing the first leg of the standard 3-legged OAuth process in which the user grants an application permission to the user’s Box account. The service will authenticate by providing the application ID, enterprise ID, token type, and sign it using a private key. Box will then verify the identity of the application using a public key from the private key pair. 

Through the authentication, the application may request one of two token types: an enterprise access token and a user access token. The Enterprise access token is used to provision/deprovision users via the user’s endpoint. The User access token is used to make API calls to endpoints of the Content API.

Box Developer Edition is in closed beta starting today and is accepting requests to participate in the beta by emailing developer-edition@box.com.