One month down in 2025: How are your resolutions coming along? Check out how to get back on track here.
Forum Discussion
GFunk
5 years agoExplorer | Level 3
API Copy/Sync two folders in dropbox account
I have a simple requirement that I'm really struggling to get working.
We need to sync up several (100+) directories with their subdirectories (all under the same account). For eg:
Source\Dir1\A1\file1.pdf
Source\Dir1\A2\file2.pdf
And copy to Dest\Dir1\A1\file1.pdf etc...
This works easily via the API if the dest directory doesn't exist:
try {
$dropbox->copy($dropboxFolder, $destPath);
} catch (\Exception $e) {
$this->copyFolderOnDropboxByFile($dropboxFolder, $destPath);
}
However, if it does, it seems I have to go any copy file by file, and then the process becomes EXTREMELY slow and often times out (perhaps running afoul of the API performance limits)
We run this process every 5 mins to make sure we are snycing up any straggling files. How can I efficiently run this ONLY when we are sure there are files that have changed/need to be synced?
Note: I can't simply delete the dest dir and recopy because there are people who are syncing these dirs to their local Dropbox account and that causes a massive amount of churning. (There could be 100dirs and 5000 files in the extreme case).
I'm using the PHP API in Laravel but what I'm after is the *correct* way of doing this. If I coudl simply compare last folder modified date or something simple, I could then only recopy folders that have changed.
What can you suggest?
- Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
I recommend reading the "Detecting Changes Guide" here:
https://www.dropbox.com/lp/developers/reference/detecting-changes-guide
That covers the options for efficiently detecting and listing just the changes that have occurred since you last checked, e.g., using the "cursor" functionality on /2/files/list_folder[/continue]. For cases where you can't just copy the folder in its entirety, you could use that to determine what specific items need to be copied.
Also, for the actual copying, when you have multiple items to copy, you can use the /2/files/copy_batch_v2 endpoint to do so in bulk:
https://www.dropbox.com/developers/documentation/http/documentation#files-copy_batch
About Dropbox API Support & Feedback
Find help with the Dropbox API from other developers.5,946 PostsLatest Activity: 3 hours ago
If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.
For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.
If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!