# Redact individual files

{% hint style="info" %}
**Required global permission:** Use the API to parse or redact a text string
{% endhint %}

You can use the Textual SDK to redact and synthesize values in individual files.

Before you perform these tasks, remember to [instantiate the SDK client](https://docs.tonic.ai/textual/tonic-textual-api/textual-api-instantiate-sdk).

For a self-hosted instance, you can also configure the S3 bucket to use to store the files. For more information, go to [textual-config-pipeline-upload](https://docs.tonic.ai/textual/textual-install-administer/configuring-textual/enable-and-configure-textual-features/textual-config-pipeline-upload "mention"). For an example of an IAM role with the required permissions, go to [#file-upload-example-iam-role](https://docs.tonic.ai/textual/textual-install-administer/configuring-textual/enable-and-configure-textual-features/pipelines-example-iam-roles#file-upload-example-iam-role "mention").

## Sending a file to Textual <a href="#textual-api-send-file" id="textual-api-send-file"></a>

To send an individual file to Textual, you use [`textual.start_file_redaction`](https://tonic-textual-sdk.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/latest/redact/api.html#tonic_textual.redact_api.TextualNer.start_file_redaction).

You first open the file so that Textual can read it, then make the call for Textual to read the file.

```python
with open("<path to the file>", "r") as f:
    j = textual.start_file_redaction(f,"<file name>")
```

The response includes:

* The file name
* The identifier of the job that processed the file. You use this identifier to retrieve a transformed version of the file.

## Getting the file with redacted or synthesized values <a href="#textual-api-get-redacted-file" id="textual-api-get-redacted-file"></a>

After you use [`textual.start_file_redaction`](https://tonic-textual-sdk.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/latest/redact/api.html#tonic_textual.redact_api.TextualNer.start_file_redaction) to send the file to Textual, you use [`textual.download_redacted_file`](https://tonic-textual-sdk.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/latest/redact/api.html#tonic_textual.redact_api.TextualNer.download_redacted_file) to retrieve a transformed version of the file.

To identify the file, you use the job identifier that you received from `textual.start_file_redaction`. You can [specify the entity type handling](https://docs.tonic.ai/textual/tonic-textual-api/datasets-redaction/api-redaction-entity-type-handling) for the detected entity values.

Before you make the call to download the file, you specify the path to download the file content to.

{% code overflow="wrap" %}

```python
with open("<path to output location>", "wb") as fo:
    fo.write(textual.download_redacted_file(<job identifier>)
```

{% endcode %}