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Link to files/folder - not sharing

Link to files/folder - not sharing

Gavin O.2
New member | Level 1

Hello again team,

I'm attempting to write an app that will send people links to items within their Dropbox files and folders.

This app makes use of the delta/metadata endpoints to discover files and folders.

I'm going through your documentation and I'm struggling to find any documented way of constructing URLs to deep link into a Dropbox account.

I see I can create shared links for the purpose of sharing but I don't want to create new links with their own security implications - I just want to provide app users with links to their own Dropbox content in the Dropbox web portal - and secured by the web portal.

Looking closer into the portal I see that I can construct URLs to deep link into a folder that look like this:

https://www.dropbox.com/home/<path>

Is this a supported mechanism for apps to do this?

  • Are there any gotchas / dropbox features that would make this a bad idea?
  • Is there a preferred way of doing this?
  • How about linking to files?

I did also notice that your windows desktop client makes use of a dropbox.com API to provide the link via a redirect:

https://www.dropbox.com/c/browse/<path>?<query>
  • Is this a supported API?
  • Can I construct those URLs from the information provided in the /metadata API?

Any guidance on how I might go about doing this would be greatly appreciated.

15 Replies 15

Lucben
Helpful | Level 6

Thank you Greg, actually what I need is not exactly that. I need the image to be loaded in the browser alone. If I replace the "www" with "dl" at the beginning of the shared URL and then remove anything following the file extension, it seems to work.

I was just wondering if it's going to be a good idea in the long term, because maybe things might change over time? 

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff

Unfortunately, I can't promise that modification will always work, so I can't officially recommend using it.

Lucben
Helpful | Level 6

Greg, can I ask you one more question? I need to link to an html file using a URL that makes the browser render the html file without anything around it, and without downloading it. Is there any way to do that? Adding "dl" instead of "www" seems to work with images but not with html files. The reason why I need it this way is that it's supposed to be rendered within an iframe, so I need a URL that I can set as a target of the iframe, to load the content of the html page (the embedded code of a youtube video, in this case). Thanks

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff

Rendering HTML via public/shared links is no longer supported unfortunately. You can find more information here:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/help/16

MrHastings
New member | Level 2

Hi Dropboxers.

 

Getting back to the orginal request (being able to deep-link to a folder in the Dropbox app or web a folder from a mobile app which is not shared)... can you advise of the status of this request? The product guys in my comapny also want our app to be able to link to a folder in Dropbox.

 

Does this request have a reference in Dropbox we can refer toi? What is the next step to determine if/when this will be developed?

 

Thanks.

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
I don't have any news on this request unfortunately, and I'm not aware of any plans for it right now.

We don't have an external feature request tracker, but I'll be happy to follow up here with news if/when this is available.
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    Greg-DB Dropbox Staff
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    MrHastings New member | Level 2
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    Lucben Helpful | Level 6
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