Access public shared files without authentication

[dredknight]

Dear community,

I was wondering if it is possible to use a the ruby dropbox API to access and download publically shared files without authentication?

You can do that from the web as long as you have the URL but I could not find any way to make this possible inside my app.

Any help on how I can make this work will be appreciated :)!

[Mark]

*moves to API forum*

[Greg-DB · Accepted solution]

If you have a shared link for the file, the simplest way to download it is to modify the URL parameter(s) as shown here:

https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/force-download

You can then download from the modified link.

Otherwise, if you do want to use the API, you can use the /2/sharing/get_shared_link_file endpoint:

https://www.dropbox.com/developers/documentation/http/documentation#sharing-get_shared_link_file

[dredknight]

Oh.. this DL=1 is just what I needed! Thank you so much :)!

P.S.

Unfortunately when I put it as a download link in ruby it still does not work even though it works through brower. 😕

[Greg-DB]

How does it fail exactly? Can you share your code?

One thing to be aware of is that the dl=1 link will return a redirect first, so make sure your HTTP client will follow redirects.

[dredknight]

Hello Greg,

Your answer is correct, it is me who is faulty.

It seems the dl=1 solution is not a direct link but when requested it sends a response with the direct link.

I had to work this over with ruby so I can tell ruby to get the request and THEN use it as download source.

Thank you for the help and dedication!