Getting multiple thumbnails of multiple files at once ?

That isn't part of the public Dropbox API, which doesn't currently offer a bulk thumbnails call, but I'll be sure to pass this along as a feature request.

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the quick response, I am aware that https://photos.dropbox.com/thumbnails_batch is not a public Dropbox API endpoint but is there a way or any public API end point to get multiple thumbnails at once ?

Thanks,

No, the Dropbox API doesn't currently offer a way to get thumbnails in bulk.

Ah ok, thanks Greg for the info.

Hi Greg,

I'm trying to get a thumbnail for an image in my account and make a POST request to https://api.dropboxapi.com/2/files/get_thumbnail, and it successfully returned with a status 200, which is good. But from the json response, I do not see any link or url to this thumbnail. Also, regardless what size or format option I put in, the returned data is always showing that the thumbnail is the same size and the format is always the original format when uploaded.

For instance, I uploaded a .jpeg or jpg image. Is it possible to retrieve a .png thumbnail and the size other than the original uploaded size ? And where do I find the link/url for this thumbnail from the response. Please advice.

Thank you

The /2/files/get_thumbnail endpoint returns the raw thumbnail data directly in the response body, not as a URL. You'll want to read the response body out and save or display that as the thumbnail. The API doesn't offer a way to get links for thumbnails, but I'll be sure to pass this along as a feature request. 

 

Also, the JSON in the dropbox-api-result header is the metadata for the original file itself, not the returned thumbnail data.

Look like the api version 1 support thumbnails url, I'm just wondering when v1 will be deprecated or no longer in use anymore?

The API v1 /thumbnails endpoint also only returns the data, not a URL.

 

You can find the deprecation timeline for API v1 here:

 

https://blogs.dropbox.com/developers/2016/06/api-v1-deprecated/

Hi Greg,

According to the document from https://www.dropbox.com/developers-v1/core/docs#thumbnails, I implemented the api v1 to get an image thumbnail and I got this and I am able to display the thumbnail with this active url https://api-content.dropbox.com/1/thumbnails/auto/IMG_8199.jpg?size=l&access_token={mytoken}. So I'm wondering if there is a replacement for v2 with a similar URL like the one from https://api-content.dropbox.com/1/thumbnails/auto/IMG_8199.jpg?size=l&access_token={mytoken}.

Thanks,

That's a way of calling the API endpoint and supplying the credentials on the URL itself (instead of in a header), but the API call still returns the thumbnail data directly.

 

API v2 does also offer a way to do this as well as documented here under "Content-download endpoints" (i.e., using the 'authorization' and 'arg' URL parameters).

 

It's important to note thought that while it does technically produce a single URL that returns a thumbnail that can be accessed just via a GET request, it should be used with caution, as it could leak the access token. For example, you shouldn't use this technique client-side if the thumbnails are being shown to anyone other than the owner of the files, as the links contain the access token.