Binary Diff ?

[developedsoftwa]

Seems so stupid to have to upload a whole file when using the API even if 1 byte has changed.

Are you able to offer a way of updating a certain block so we as developers can do the binary diff our end and upload the parts that have changed.

[Greg-DB · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the post! The Dropbox API doesn't currently offer this, but we'll consider it a feature request. I can't promise if or when that would be implemented and released though.

[Berk D.]

Greg,

If not, what is this? https://www.dropbox.com/help/8 

[Greg-DB]

That's referring to the desktop client, which uses a different mechanism not available in the Dropbox API.

[waltertross]

is there external access to the feature request, so that we can see whether and how it is being taken care of?

[Greg-DB]

@waltertross We don't have a public feature request tracker. This forum thread itself serves as reference to this request, and I'll follow up here if/when I have any update on this. I don't have any news to report on this feature request right now. 

[waltertross]

Thank you very much, Greg.

I would like to add the following note:

There is a trivial case of the binary diff, which is the case of files that are only appended to. A use case are log files, another is a project I have in mind, and I'm sure that there are others. If engineers at Dropbox are afraid of handing over the binary diff algorithm to developers, they should keep in mind that just giving them the opportunity to specify what has been APPENDED to a file could make many people happy, including me 😉

[Greg-DB]

@waltertross Thanks for the note!