FileMetadata checksum

[Joel T.9]

Is there something better than file size to use as a checksum?

Maybe Sha1 or MD5? I didn't see one on the FileMetadata class. It appears "Rev" changes even when the contents haven't changed (ie. on file rename)

[Matt A.6]

I agree, having the ability within the web UI interface to see the file checksums (MD5 and SHA1, at least), would be greatly beneficial in order to help in determining whether files that have been uploaded/downloaded are complete and accurate. An additional tie in to this would be ability to add alerts if a checksum changed - maybe file version history would offer this?

[Greg-DB]

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

[Team F.1]

That is good news, is the content_hash available on the Java API?

[Greg-DB]

Yes, in the official Dropbox API v2 Java SDK it's available as FileMetadata.contentHash.

[cro]

Hi!
Is there any reason why content_hash, which was introduced in version 3.0.0, has been removed in version 3.0.1?

ref. https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.dropbox.core/dropbox-core-sdk

[Greg-DB]

Thanks for the report! I believe this is a known issue with the Java SDK release right now. The team is looking into it, and I'll follow up here once I have an update for you.

[Greg-DB]

This should be fixed in the latest release of the SDK, v3.0.2. Please update and let me know if you're still seeing any issues.

[cro]

I have now updated to version 3.0.2 and everything seems to work as expected. Thanks so much for your feedback.