Using ItemCollection on a BoxFolder type with Box API only returns 100 results and cannot retrieve the remaining ones - box-api

Question

For a while now, I've been using the Box API to connect Acumatica ERP to Box and everything has been going fine until recently. Whenever I try to use a BoxCollection type with the property ItemCollection, I'll only get the first 100 results no matter the limit I set in the GetInformationAsync(). Here is the code snippet:
[PermissionSet(SecurityAction.Assert, Name = "FullTrust")]
public BoxCollection<BoxItem> GetFolderItems(string folderId, int limit = 500, int offset = 0)
{
var response = new BoxCollection<BoxItem>();
var fieldsToGet = new List<string>() { BoxItem.FieldName, BoxItem.FieldDescription, BoxItem.FieldParent, BoxItem.FieldEtag, BoxFolder.FieldItemCollection };
response = Task.Run(() => Client.FoldersManager.GetFolderItemsAsync(folderId, limit, offset)).Result;
return response;
}
I then pass that information on to a BoxFolder type variable, and then try to use the ItemCollection.Entries property, but this only returns 100 results at a time, with no visible way to extract the remaining 61 (in my case, the Count = 161, but Entries = 100 always)
Another code snippet of the used variable, I am basically trying to get the folder ID based on the name of the folder inside Box:
private static void SyncProcess(BoxFolder rootFolder, string folderName)
{
var boxFolder = rootFolder.ItemCollection.Entries.SingleOrDefault(ic => ic.Type == "folder" && ic.Name == folderName);
}
I wasn't able to find anything related to that limit = 100 in the documentation and it only started to give me problems recently.
I had to create a work around by using the following:
var boxCollection = client.GetFolderItems(rootFolder.Id);
var boxFolder = boxCollection.Entries.SingleOrDefault(ic => ic.Type == "folder" && ic.Name == folderName);
I was just wondering if there was a better way to get the complete collection using the property ItemCollection.Entries like I used to, instead of having to fetch them again.
Thanks!

Answer 1

Box pages folder items to keep response times short. The default page size is 100 items. You must iterate through the pages to get all of the items. Here's a code snippet that'll get 100 items at a time until all items in the folder are fetched. You can request up to 1000 items at a time.
var items = new List<BoxItem>();
BoxCollection<BoxItem> result;
do
{
result = await Client.FoldersManager.GetFolderItemsAsync(folderId, 100, items.Count());
items.AddRange(result.Entries);
} while (items.Count() < result.TotalCount);

Answer 2

John's answer can lead to a duplicate values in your items collection if there will be external/shared folders in your list. Those are being hidden when you are calling "GetFolderItemsAsync" with "asUser" header set.
There is a comment about it in the Box API's codeset itself (https://github.com/box/box-windows-sdk-v2/blob/main/Box.V2/Managers/BoxFoldersManager.cs)
Note: If there are hidden items in your previous response, your next offset should be = offset + limit, not the # of records you received back.
The total_count returned may not match the number of entries when using enterprise scope, because external folders are hidden the list of entries.
Taking this into account, it's better to not rely on comparing the number of items retrieved and the TotalCount property.
var items = new List<BoxItem>();
BoxCollection<BoxItem> result;
int limit = 100;
int offset = 0;
do
{
result = await Client.FoldersManager.GetFolderItemsAsync(folderId, limit, offset);
offset += limit;
items.AddRange(result.Entries);
} while (offset < result.TotalCount);