Distinguish shared link and preview links

[Mhd]

Am I correct to assume the following:

a shared link will alawys have /s/ in the URL

The original preview link is of the from : www.dropbox.com/home/path/to/file?preview=filename.pdf

What I am trying to do
I have a list of URLs in my DB, and I need to use the API to generate a preview and embed it in a webpage

for the original preview links, I am parsing the lnk to extract the path and then use the get_preview endpoint
for the shared link, I am thinking about calling get_shared_link_metadata and from there get the id and call get_preview 

Is there an easier way to do this?

[Greg-DB]

Dropbox shared links for files do currently have /s/, but there are other kinds of links. E.g., shared links for folders use /sh/.

In any case though, these link formats are not guaranteed and are subject to change in the future, so you shouldn't rely on them.

Likewise, you shouldn't rely on the "www.dropbox.com/home/path/to/file?preview" format.

You can list the files/folders in your account directly though, using list_folder and list_folder continue. That will return file metadata including path and id.

Using the paths you get from those, you can call the other methods as necessary, e.g., get_preview to get preview data, create_shared_link_with_settings to create shared links, list_shared_links to retrieve existing shared links, etc.

[Mhd]

Hello Greg,

Thanks for the detailed answer. 

I tried to go with with list_folder and list_folder/continue. But there are thousnads of files and it was not practical.
Also, sometimes a user have a sharing link but the file is not shared with their dropbox account, they only have the public sharing link, so I can't use this option. 

It would be great if there was a way to get the meta data of a file through a link , despite what kind of link it is. 

For now, I will relay on get_shared_link_metadata and if it failesI will assume it is a preview link and parse it accorrdingly.
and I will limit URLs I have to sharing links only from now on.

Thanks again for your answer, please let me know if there is an easier approach