Dropbox API access files on shared link without authentication

[sir_shepherd]

Hey everyone,

i'm currently writing a new android app for a football club of my village and i want to load some images from a dropbox folder using a shared link.

Is it possible to load files from a shared dropbox link folder without authenticating the user using the dropbox api for android.

I'm searching for a solution (and hopefully a good tutorial) since a few days, but it seems like nobody tried the same thing before or it's just not possible. 

I'm new in the world of 'dropbox developer tools' and i found a lot of solutions in which i have to authenticate the user with an access-token or app-key. But i don't know/understand which kind of access will be granted to the app by using one of these things. Maybe, someone can explain the usage of these to me, because if i can use them without any security issues, it could be acceptable solution.

The app should only be possible to read the content of the folder and should not be allowed to write into it.

Best regards,

DS

[Greg-DB · Accepted solution]

If you want programmatic unauthenticated read-only access, you may want to use a Dropbox shared link to the folder (which should contain a component "/sh/") with the URL parameters documented here:

https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/share/force-download

If you modify the URL as described there, e.g., using a "dl=1" parameter, you can then programmatically download directly from the shared link without using the API, app key, access tokens, etc.

In the case of a shared link for a folder, that will give you a download of a zip file containing the folder. You could then unzip that and use the contents as desired.