dvc: use box.com as remote storage solution

[dangadadanga]

My company has unlimited storage for Box.com and I would like to use it to store my models/data. This is the only thing preventing me currently from using DVC although I would like to.

I know Box.com allows access through FTP and API, maybe you can integrate with it.
See these pages for additional info:
https://developer.box.com/reference#upload-a-file
https://community.box.com/t5/Managing-Content-Troubleshooting/I-m-Having-Trouble-Using-FTP-with-Box/ta-p/323

They also have user accounts and app accounts. Authentication for the user account is based on OAUTH (if I remember correctly). We mostly use app accounts so that would be ideal (although both would work).

Note: I saw there's a ticket for WebDav, but WebDav has been retired.

[efiop]

Hi @dangadadanga !

Great feature request! I'm not at all familiar with box.com myself, but we have a feature request for supporting FTP at https://github.com/iterative/dvc/issues/1696 supporting which should probably be enough for some basic workflows. Let's keep this ticket open for now to see if there is any interest from the community for specifically box.com. If you would like to implement support for it yourself, take a look at dvc/remote/ directory, where our drivers for AWS s3, Google Cloud Storage, SSH/SFTP, etc are located, which could be used as a template/example :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks,
Ruslan

[dangadadanga]

Thanks Ruslan! I'll keep an eye on the ticket.

[efiop]

Closing this due to the lack of interest from other users 🙁 If anyone is interested in this or is willing to contribute, please ping us and we'll reopen.

[pokey]

This is something I'd love to see. We use Box with SSO fwiw. I think our workaround for now will be to use the local Box Drive directory as a local remote, and have an initial step in our README telling users to configure Box Drive local directory in local config.

[efiop]

@dangadadanga @pokey Also you could mount it as ftp to your local directory and use it as a local remote with dvc. :slightly_smiling_face: Ok, let's reopen this one to see if anyone is willing to implement this, since this is not in the core-team focus.

[efiop]

Actually, I'll close this one in favor or https://github.com/iterative/dvc/issues/1696 , since box.com implementation would be through ftp.

[jorgeorpinel]

@efiop why favor FTP vs. a specific integration to the Box.com API? https://developer.box.com/reference#upload-a-file. I guess FTP can catch more cases?

[efiop]

@jorgeorpinel Good point. box seems to also have python api https://github.com/box/box-python-sdk . Reopening.

[efiop]

Closing since there is not enough interest. If you are interested in this, please leave a comment. :slightly_smiling_face: