How do I get all files and folders on Dropbox Business account

Thanks for the feedback! We appreciate it. I'm sharing this with the team.

Note that if a Metadata object doesn't contain `path_lower` or `path_display`, it indicates that "the file or folder is not mounted". I.e., it's in a shared folder that isn't currently added to the account, so it doesn't have a path in the account.

And it sounds like specifically, you'd like the following, so I've enumerated the following feature requests for the team:

• The ability to easily get the total size for a folder's contents
• The ability to get the size for a deleted file

This is not true, there are several folders that are inside team folders and show up within the team folder on the UI, but when I list those folders via API I don't see `path_display`. Moreover, there are several deleted files/folders in the response that just have `name` but no `path_display` or `path_lower`. 

Note that if a Metadata object doesn't contain `path_lower` or `path_display`, it indicates that "the file or folder is not mounted". I.e., it's in a shared folder that isn't currently added to the account, so it doesn't have a path in the account.

I am frustrated because of the disambiguity and unnecessary optional fields in the response. Most importantly if someone was given a task to generate the list of all files/folders on a given Dropbox account, it will take them forever because Dropbox doesn't have an endpoint that can be called to list each and every folder. What Dropbox expects us to do is call `list_folder/{continue}`. Consider 1000 members that have almost identical folders (i.e. a large shared folder shared with all of them). When I list each member's folder recursively I will be unneccesarily listing that same shared folder 1000 times. If I want to skip listing that folder again, then I need to set `recursive=False` and check each folder in response to see if it was listed previously, unnecssary processing. APIs are suppossed to make life easier not difficult.

there are several folders that are inside team folders and show up within the team folder on the UI, but when I list those folders via API I don't see `path_display`

Do you mean you're calling for a namespace directly as an admin without a root like this?

curl -X POST https://api.dropboxapi.com/2/files/list_folder \
    --header "Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>" \
    --header "Dropbox-API-Select-Admin: <ADMIN_USER_ID>" \
    --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
    --data "{\"path\": \"ns:1990893360\"}"

# {
#   "entries": [
#     {
#       ".tag": "folder",
#       "name": "test",
#       "parent_shared_folder_id": "1990893360",
#       "id": "id:hro-cp_zmJAAAAAAAAAACg",
#       "sharing_info": {
#         "read_only": false,
#         "parent_shared_folder_id": "1990893360",
#         "traverse_only": false,
#         "no_access": false
#       }
#     },
#     {
#       ".tag": "folder",
#       "name": "test folder in team folder",
#       "parent_shared_folder_id": "1990893360",
#       "id": "id:hro-cp_zmJAAAAAAAAAADw",
#       "shared_folder_id": "3980274560",
#       "sharing_info": {
#         "read_only": false,
#         "parent_shared_folder_id": "1990893360",
#         "shared_folder_id": "3980274560",
#         "traverse_only": false,
#         "no_access": false
#       }
#     }
#   ],
#   "cursor": "...",
#   "has_more": false
# }

The paths aren't returned because this call isn't rooted anywhere; i.e., there's no root for the paths to be mounted relative to.

Instead, you can supply the path root using the 'Dropbox-API-Path-Root' header (from the Namespace Guide), like this:

curl -X POST https://api.dropboxapi.com/2/files/list_folder \
    --header "Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>" \
    --header "Dropbox-API-Select-Admin: <ADMIN_USER_ID>" \
    --header 'Dropbox-API-Path-Root: {".tag": "root", "root": "1990815600"}' \
    --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
    --data "{\"path\": \"ns:1990893360\"}"

# {
#   "entries": [
#     {
#       ".tag": "folder",
#       "name": "test",
#       "path_lower": "/team folder 1/test",
#       "path_display": "/team folder 1/test",
#       "parent_shared_folder_id": "1990893360",
#       "id": "id:hro-cp_zmJAAAAAAAAAACg",
#       "sharing_info": {
#         "read_only": false,
#         "parent_shared_folder_id": "1990893360",
#         "traverse_only": false,
#         "no_access": false
#       }
#     },
#     {
#       ".tag": "folder",
#       "name": "test folder in team folder",
#       "path_lower": "/team folder 1/test folder in team folder",
#       "path_display": "/team folder 1/test folder in team folder",
#       "parent_shared_folder_id": "1990893360",
#       "id": "id:hro-cp_zmJAAAAAAAAAADw",
#       "shared_folder_id": "3980274560",
#       "sharing_info": {
#         "read_only": false,
#         "parent_shared_folder_id": "1990893360",
#         "shared_folder_id": "3980274560",
#         "traverse_only": false,
#         "no_access": false
#       }
#     }
#   ],
#   "cursor": "...",
#   "has_more": false
# }

Yes, I am not supplying the 'with root path' header. What about the deleted files/folders? There are several that don't return the path_display.

Can you share a bit of sample code/output for that case so I can take a look? Thanks in advance! 

for namespace_list in session.post('2/team/namespaces/list'): 
    for namespace in namespace_list: 
        for listing in session.post('2/files/list_folder', headers={'Dropbox-API-Select-Admin': <team_member_id>}, json={'path': f'ns:{namespace[namespace_id]}', 'recursive': True, 'include_deleted': True}):
            for item in listing:
                print(item)

Above is an example of the approach I am taking to list all folders. Part of the problem is if a folder is shared with all members, then when I list 'team_member_folders' I am listing the same folder multiple times.

Thanks! The omission of the path on the deleted entries in this case would be for the same reason as mentioned in my previous post yesterday; i.e., without the path root there's no root for the paths to be mounted relative to.

For shared folders, the shared folder ID will be consistent across users, so you can keep a list of the IDs you've seen already, and skip them when you come across them again.