cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Announcements
Want to learn some quick and useful tips to make your day easier? Check out how Calvin uses Replay to get feedback from other teams at Dropbox here.

Dropbox API Support & Feedback

Find help with the Dropbox API from other developers.

cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Checksum, creation date, modification date

Checksum, creation date, modification date

dtheodor
Explorer | Level 3
Go to solution

I have a couple of use cases when building 3rd party apps, for both personal and business, which as far as I can tell are not possible with the current API capabilities:

 

 

1. Checksum - File integrity verification

 

I want to be sure that the file I just downloaded from or uploaded to Dropbox has been transferred correctly. This would be trivial to check if the API exposed a checksum attribute, such as sha1 or md5, that I can compare with my locally computed value. I also want to display this information for the needs of my app. Right now there is no such possibilty

 

2. Creation date, created by

 

Being able to access the file/folder creation dates certainly gives capabilities that are not possible without it, from simple 'sort by creation date' to more advanced account analytics. This attribute is not exposed at all.

 

3. Being able to set the modification date and the 'modified by' field

 

If I am migrating data from any other service (either on-premise or cloud) into Dropbox, I want to maintain the original modification dates and the 'modified by' user values (and the equivalent creation fields, and even the past file versions if we take it to the extreme). What happens in such a scenario right now is that all modification dates are set to the date that the migration took place, and the 'modified by' is set to the person that ran the migration (the business admin or the personal account for example). Maintaining this information is crucial and this makes migrating into Dropbox less attractive

 

 

Have I missed any way that these are already possible, or are there any plans to implement them?

 

Regards,

Dimitris

1 Accepted Solution

Accepted Solutions

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
Go to solution

1. That's correct, the API doesn't currently expose any sort of file hash, but I'll be sure to pass this along as a feature request. 

 

2. Likewise, the API doesn't offer creation timestamps. I'll send this as a request as well.

 

3. You can set the client_modified time when uploading a file (e.g., using the client_modified parameter on /upload). The API doesn't offer the ability to override modified_by though. We'll consider that a feature request.

View solution in original post

4 Replies 4

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
Go to solution

1. That's correct, the API doesn't currently expose any sort of file hash, but I'll be sure to pass this along as a feature request. 

 

2. Likewise, the API doesn't offer creation timestamps. I'll send this as a request as well.

 

3. You can set the client_modified time when uploading a file (e.g., using the client_modified parameter on /upload). The API doesn't offer the ability to override modified_by though. We'll consider that a feature request.

DreamPro
Helpful | Level 5
Go to solution

Greg,

 

Can you confirm, is point 1 actually a possiblility for the future and are you planning on rolling this out? If so can you please provide an ETA.

 

It really is a fundamental need of any file service API to know if your file was uploaded successfully, and if its intact as per the source.

 

I'm currently looking at all options and would love to use dropbox for my solution, but if i cannot check file integrity after upload, im afraid im going to have to look else where e.g. Amazon S3 etc.

 

Thanks.

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
Go to solution
I can't make any promises or offer a timeline unfortunately, but this is something we are aiming to add. I'll add your vote to the request for it.

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
Go to solution
The Dropbox API now offers a hash of file data that you can use to verify a file's contents. You can find it in FileMetadata.content_hash. It isn't a single MD5 or SHA1, but rather a combination of SHA256 hashes of the pieces of the file. You can find more information here:

https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/content-hash
Need more support?
Who's talking

Top contributors to this post

  • User avatar
    Greg-DB Dropbox Staff
  • User avatar
    DreamPro Helpful | Level 5
What do Dropbox user levels mean?