Download file contents from SharePoint Online via REST

Question

I have a site on SharePoint Online with some documents in the Shared Documents document library I'd like to download via REST. All the calls I make are returning a bunch of file properties in XML. I can't seem to get the binary file contents. For example:

https://mycompany.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite/_api/web/GetFolderByServerRelativeUrl(
    '/sites/MySite/Shared Documents')/Files('MyDocument.docx')

Returns a big XML document including:

<m:properties>
  <d:CheckInComment/>
  <d:CheckOutType m:type="Edm.Int32">2</d:CheckOutType>
  <d:ContentTag>{2b9067cd-cb9b-4643-a9d6-19ef489b33e4},1,2</d:ContentTag>
  <d:CustomizedPageStatus m:type="Edm.Int32">0</d:CustomizedPageStatus>
  <d:ETag>&quot;{2b9067cd-cb9b-4643-a9d6-19ef489b33e4},1&quot;</d:ETag>
  <d:Exists m:type="Edm.Boolean">true</d:Exists>
  <d:IrmEnabled m:type="Edm.Boolean">false</d:IrmEnabled>
  <d:Length m:type="Edm.Int64">19900</d:Length>
  <d:Level m:type="Edm.Byte">1</d:Level>
  <d:LinkingUri>https://mycompany.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite/Shared%20Documents/MyDocument.docx?d=w2b9068bccb9b4643a9d619ef489b33e3</d:LinkingUri>
  <d:LinkingUrl>https://mycompany.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite/Shared Documents/MyDocument.docx?d=w2b9068bccb9b4643a9d619ef489b33e3</d:LinkingUrl>
  <d:MajorVersion m:type="Edm.Int32">1</d:MajorVersion>
  <d:MinorVersion m:type="Edm.Int32">0</d:MinorVersion>
  <d:Name>MyDocument.docx</d:Name>
  <d:ServerRelativeUrl>/sites/MySite/Shared Documents/MyDocument.docx</d:ServerRelativeUrl>
  <d:TimeCreated m:type="Edm.DateTime">2020-05-07T20:38:53Z</d:TimeCreated>
  <d:TimeLastModified m:type="Edm.DateTime">2020-05-07T20:38:53Z</d:TimeLastModified>
  <d:Title/>
  <d:UIVersion m:type="Edm.Int32">512</d:UIVersion>
  <d:UIVersionLabel>1.0</d:UIVersionLabel>
  <d:UniqueId m:type="Edm.Guid">2b9067cd-cb9b-4643-a9d6-19ef489b33e4</d:UniqueId>
</m:properties>

From what I've seen elsewhere, adding /$value to the end of the URL should return the file contents, but it just returns the same XML.

Answer 1

Below endpoint is for file downloading.

https://abc.sharepoint.com/sites/s01/_api/Web/GetFileByServerRelativePath(decodedurl='/sites/s01/Shared%20Documents/file-example_PDF_500_kB.pdf')/$value

You can take a reference of the API doc:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/sp-add-ins/working-with-folders-and-files-with-rest#working-with-files-by-using-rest

BR

Answer 2

Yeah, I've found that:

https://mycompany.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite/_api/web/GetFileByServerRelativeUrl('/sites/MySite/Shared%20Documents/MyDocument.docx')/$value

Also, only returns the XML metadata for the file and not the actual file. That or a 404 error for platform independent clients that may not be able to process both the content and the metadata from the one response.

I've found that:

https://mycompany.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite/_api/web/GetFileByServerRelativeUrl('/sites/MySite/Shared%20Documents/MyDocument.docx')/OpenBinaryStream()

Actually returns the file.

Reference:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/sharepoint-csom/jj170439(v=office.15)

Answer 3

It was a silly mistake. The /$value suffix works, I just wasn't escaping the $ with a backslash on the (Linux) command line.