API v2 send HTTP "Range" request not working

[David W.152]

Hi dropbox,

------------

app permission type: App folder

API version: dropbox API v2

description: HTTP request with "Range" header field not working.

------------

A HTTP request with "Range" header should works like:

Request:

GET /test_320x180.mp4
Range: bytes=1000-

Response:

206 Partial Content
Content-Type: video/mp4
Content-Length: 64656927
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Range: bytes 1000-64656926/*

But got these:

> POST /2/files/download HTTP/1.1

> Host: content.dropboxapi.com

> User-Agent: curl/7.43.0

> Accept: */*

> Authorization: Bearer h4CFOpR9f5UAAAAAAAAnRbDUUE……

> Dropbox-API-Arg: {"path": "/test.png"}

> Range: bytes=2000-

>

  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:--  0:00:01 --:--:--     0

< HTTP/1.1 200 OK

< Server: nginx

< Date: Sun, 08 Nov 2015 15:39:07 GMT

< Content-Type: application/octet-stream

< Content-Length: 14659

< Connection: keep-alive

< pragma: no-cache

< cache-control: no-cache

< original-content-length: 14659

< dropbox-api-result: {"name": "test.png", "path_lower": "/test.png", "id": "id:wPJq19T.....", "client_modified": "2015-11-08T09:18:28Z", "server_modified": "2015-11-08T10:18:28Z", "rev": "1f3f632b5f", "size": 14659}

< X-Server-Response-Time: 186

< X-Dropbox-Request-Id: 4079fdd986580631468b829d8d20bebe

< X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow, noimageindex

<

-------------------

Can not finish my job without "Range"'s help.

Help please, thank you so much!

[Greg-DB]

API v2 doesn't currently support Range Retrieval Requests, but we are planning on adding it in the future.

[David W.152]

Thanks Gregory!

[Norbert K.2]

Dear Gregory!

Please don't hesitate to implement this feature 🙂 It would be extremely helpful...

The absence of it is painful 😞

Thanks in advance

[Greg-DB]

Thanks for the feedback, Norbert! I'm sending it along.

[Norbert K.2]

Dear Gregory,

I would like to ask, when can we expect the range support for downloading? (partial download)

Now if i have for example 4 video file, and all with 500MB length, and if i want to peek into these video files to get their codec, or other metadata, i am forced to download 2GB data instead of ~2KB!!! That is insane... I can't believe it.

[Greg-DB]

This is still planned, but I don't have a timeline to share right now unfortunately. 

As a workaround, you can use /files (GET) on API v1 with Range Retrieval Requests, with the same OAuth 2 auth.

[Norbert K.2]

thanks Gregory, i will check it.

[Norbert K.2]

Dear Gregory!

I tested API v1, and i can download partial content which is good. Thanks.

But ... as is see API v1 is not support file access with ID. only with file path.

This is good while i have no special characters in name.

With special characters (for example: öüóőúéáűí) i got the path in encoded form. \u000

If i try to read file content for file with special \u000 encode characters in its name, i got error:

 "backslash not supported." the url encoding not helps. The question is:

How can i read file content with API v1 for files with special characters in the name?

[Greg-DB]

You need to URI encode the path in the URL. For example, to download a portion of a file at "/tést.txt" using curl:

curl "https://content.dropboxapi.com/1/files/auto/t%C3%A9st.txt" \
 -H "Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>" \
 -H "Range:bytes=0-3"