API to get content hash of shared file link

[overlookmotel]

Hi.

Is there an API endpoint to get the content hash of a file received as a shared link?

Where the shared link is to a folder, it's possible with:

sharing/get_shared_link_metadata { "url": "https://www.dropbox.com/s/..." }

then

files/list_folder { shared_link: { "url": "https://www.dropbox.com/s/..." }, path: '/path/to/folder' }

The result from files/list_folder contains the content_hash field for each file.

However, if the shared link is to a file, not a folder, I can't find any way to obtain the content_hash for that file from the API.

Therefore, to ensure files are downloaded without corruption, I have to download everything twice and compare the hashes of the two copies - which is a waste of bandwidth for both me and Dropbox.

It would be great if this was available through the API. Perhaps it is and I can't find the right endpoint.

[Greg-DB]

No, unfortunately API doesn't offer a way to get the content hash for a file given just a shared link to the file itself from another account, but I'll pass this along as a feature request. I can't promise if or when that might be implemented though. 

[overlookmotel]

Thanks Greg.

It would be very valuable to be able to retrieve this information from the API. As I mentioned, currently we have to download everything twice and hash-check the two copies against each other to ensure no corruption, which is waste of bandwidth on both sides.

[Greg-DB]

Thanks for following up with the additional feedback.

By the way though, since Dropbox enforces TLS (i.e., it will redirect any http:// shared link URLs to https://), I believe you can technically rely on TLS to ensure integrity of the download against any corruption in transit. The TLS specification states:

The primary goal of the TLS Protocol is to provide privacy and data integrity between two communicating applications.

The connection is reliable. Message transport includes a message integrity check using a keyed MAC.