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n00b-iest question ever: What url is the Saver parameter referring to?

n00b-iest question ever: What url is the Saver parameter referring to?

David W.136
Helpful | Level 6

I've registered an app that I run off of localhost. I have gotten the Chooser to work. But the only way I can get the saver to not give me a 403 error is to use as its parameter the dropbox url that Chooser returns to me when I download a file. That URL is of the form www.dropbox.com/s/fjdksdlgadasdgflkj/file%20name.txt

But suppose I want to upload a new file from my host that I didn't download through the Chooser. I'd expect such a file to have an url such as http://localhost/somefolder/filename.txt.

1. Is it possible to use Saver to upload a new file? Is there some trick to the URL that I'm not getting.

2. While I'm here, what I'd really like is the ability to get the the pathname of an existing file in my Dropbox folder. E.g., Dropbox/ImportantFiles/filename.txt. Is there any way to get that instead of the hashed path expressed in the URL that Chooser shows me? (Yes, this is a totally different question. But if I could get the pathname, I could use the Dropbox API to enable JavaScript to browse a mirror of my hard drive -- a holy grail for us localhosters.)

Thanks for your help. And, yes, I am embarrassed.

2 Replies 2

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff

1. The URL given to the Saver is supposed to be a URL of a file that will be saved to the end user's Dropbox account. The Saver won't be able to download from a localhost URL though. The URL you supply to the Saver is sent off to the Dropbox servers to download, which can't access your local machine and the file it is serving locally, since it's not available on the Internet. The URL you supply to the Saver needs to be accessible on the Internet, like the Dropbox link sample you gave (but it doesn't need to be hosted on Dropbox of course).

2. If you want to get the original file path from a Chooser link, that is possible via the API if you have the right user linked. This was recently covered here:

https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203299509-How-to-get-the-file-path-from-a-prev...

David W.136
Helpful | Level 6

Thank you for the quick and helpful response, Gregory.

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