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clientModified & serverModified date

clientModified & serverModified date

NajwanH
New member | Level 2

Hi there,
I`m facing an issue with the modified dates.

The mechanism that I`m working on fetches the client`s files each time a process identifies a new file is added. when the fetching process starts it is checking if there are a new files were added via the serverModified date: only if it is later than the existing date it will retrieve the file/s.

The thing is the clientModified dates of the files are varies and earlier than the serverModified dates which are one similar date.

So the process gets the first file, when it comes to the other files, it finds that the serverModified date is already exists(the first file got the same date) and skips these files.

How can I retrieve all the new files that got one serverModified date?

I checked the docs on this and found:
"clientModified - For files, this is the modification time set by the desktop client when the file was added to Dropbox. Since this time is not verified (the Dropbox server stores whatever the desktop client sends up), this should only be used for display purposes (such as sorting) and not, for example, to determine if a file has changed or not. Must not be null.

serverModified - The last time the file was modified on Dropbox. Must not be null."

In clientModified date - How did Dropbox identify this date? Does it matter if the client`s folder is syncing with dropbox or not?

Thakns.

1 Reply 1

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff

The Dropbox API doesn't offer a way to list/filter files only for a specific date, but I'll pass this along as a feature request. I can't promise if or when that might be implemented though. 

Instead, you'll need to list items using the /2/files/list_folder[/continue] endpoints via the process and pagination detailed in the documentation, iterate over the entries, and filter to the dates you want. Once you do that though, you can stay up to date with just new changes by storing the last cursor you received, and then continuing to call /2/files/list_folder/continue as necessary; that will return just new changes since you last called.

Note that the clientModified time is supplied by the client (e.g., official Dropbox desktop app, third party API app, etc.), so it should not be trusted or used for file change detection.

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