can't find "File Requests API"

[c. cody]

not yet?

[Steve M.]

Jim, you're also interested in programmatically uploading files to an existing file request? I'd love to hear your scenario as well.

If you don't want to elaborate here on the forum, feel free to open an API support ticket: https://www.dropbox.com/developers/contact.

[Steven L.24]

Steve, thanks for the response, and sorry for the delay.

It would be useful in some of our internal applications to offer file uploads to a shared folder without requiring that users fully authenticate first. There are certainly other ways to accomplish the same thing (on Amazon S3 or an FTP server), but it would be preferable to keep everything in Dropbox (for all the same reasons we use Dropbox for Business in the first place). If you'd like, I can open a support ticket and provide more specifics.

[Steve M.]

Steven, why wouldn't you just use the Core API (/files_put) to upload the file? (Why do you need to use a file request?)

[Steven L.24]

Ah, /files_put would work, but it'd be a bit cleaner to use a File Request. The Core API requires that requests are authenticated, so we'd have to create an app in the App Console, get Oauth credentials from one of our user accounts, and then bundle those with the internal applications.

[Steve M.]

Steven, are you saying there's no server-side component to this app? (You're distributing apps that get installed on people's computers?) If so, you're right that you shouldn't embed an access token in that app, just as you wouldn't want to embed S3 or FTP credentials in the app.

I was assuming some server-side component that accepts the file upload and sends it along to Dropbox. E.g., in Python:

DropboxClient("<access token for the account>").put_file('/path/to/shared_folder/' + filename, file_to_upload)

If there's no server-side component, I guess you were hoping to create the file request once by hand, and then embed the file request URL in the app. Is that right?

[Steven L.24]

Yes, that is correct. It's an internal application just for employees, so the credentials would not get distributed widely nor cause a real problem if they needed to be revoked. There's no server-side component for this particular feature, and direct uploads are appealing because we wouldn't have to build/maintain/expose one.

[Family E.]

Another usecase is remove the need for a business to run a backend or ftp server. Just let a IoT application regulary send in sensor data to a dropbox account. E.g daily temperature readings from a sensors is pushed to a dropbox account.

[Steve M.]

"Family E.", why wouldn't you just use the regular /files/upload API endpoint to do this?

[Johan S.4]

I would have liked to use the file request api for requesting files from a client. The client creates an order on a website, and part of this includes that the client should attach some files.

So if we could have sent a separate email with a file request using the API that would have been awesome - so we didnt have to do the upload script and email attachment ourselves.

Anyway.. not in the near future it seems 🙂

[Greg-DB]

Thanks for the additional feedback and context!