API search access to shared folder

[Caligari]

Hey there,

I'm working on a small utility using the dropbox API.

So far, I've been able to set up an App and used the files/search_v2 endpoint to locate specific files in the scoped app's folder.

But my actual use case is to find files in a folder for which the user will have a shared link. The folder is quite large, and I don't want the users to have to add it to their dropbox as a mounted share. Is it possible to pass a shared folder link to an endpoint like search_v2? Or is there another way that I can locate and read the files that I need from a shared folder link without mounting it?

Thanks for any advice you can provide.

[Scott-DB]

Hi Caligari,

It sounds like your app has "App folder" access. To access all files and folders a user has access to, including through the search endpoint, your app needs "Full Dropbox" access.

Scott

[Caligari]

(Wow is it hard to get the API Explorer to generate tokens for a different App, or did I miss something?)

Thanks for that! But...

So, I've created a new Full Access app. But I'm unsure what I'm supposed to put, where, to look for files in the shared folder I have a link for. How do I put that link (or part of it) in the optional Path field?

I note that the list_folder endpoint has a specific shared link field, but not the search endpoint. I suppose I could use the list_folder endpoint and process the list of filenames myself, but there are a lot of them, so I'd rather get just the ones I need, if that is possible.

Advice welcome!

- Caligari

[Greg-DB · Accepted solution]

The search endpoints don't support searching within a shared link, but you can use /2/files/list_folder[/continue] to list the contents (and filter client-side as needed) as you mentioned, so I suggest trying that to see if it would be sufficient for your use case.

To do so, you would specify the shared link URL in the 'shared_link.url' field. When doing so, the 'path' field would only be needed if you want to list a relative path for a specific subfolder inside the folder for which you're supplying the shared link.

I suggest trying the API v2 Explorer, as it's helpful for building calls like this.

[Caligari]

Thanks for that!

I'll filter the list locally, which should be fine. Just more network traffic 🙂

- Caligari