Timeout for request to Dropbox API

James (.

A User reported that after logging out of his Dropbox account, he gets this message: "The request to link the app is invalid" . I can't replicate the issue here. I had him do some extra logging but saw nothing in the console that looked odd, expect for multiple occurrences of  timeout for request to https://api.dropbox.com/1/fileops/move, retrying after 1 seconds

I can't say it's related to the issue or not (though I'm guessing, not).

Note: I am not the Sync developer. I am Customer Support. I am not looking to point fingers, but am trying to gather info to explain to my Users what the problem is and whether it's transient / inherent and if it's fixable or not.

Thanks (from Support to Support),

Jim Neumann

BLUEFROG

DEVONtechnologies, LLC

(Note: I had a least one other ticket with timeouts like this. It sounds like a problem on his network or responses from your server. I appreciate any insight on this. Thanks.)

PS: I'm not sure this is in the correct place. It appeared to be for posting on the Developer Forums. Apologies if I'm in the wrong spot.

Greg-DB

Hi Jim, there are definitely two different issues here, so I'll address them separately. (They're both to do with the Dropbox Developer Platform though so this is a correct place to ask for help.)

1. The error "The request to link the app is invalid" occurs on the /oauth/authorize step of the OAuth 1 app authorization flow:

https://www.dropbox.com/developers/core/docs#authorize

This error should indicate that the 'oauth_token' parameter is missing or invalid. For example, the following URLs will display this error:

- because there is no 'oauth_token' parameter:
https://www.dropbox.com/1/oauth/authorize

- because the 'oauth_token' parameter contains an invalid request token:
https://www.dropbox.com/1/oauth/authorize?oauth_token=notarealrequesttoken

The 'oauth_token' parameter needs to contain a valid request token retrieved from /oauth/request_token:

https://www.dropbox.com/developers/core/docs#request-token

To investigate that issue, the first step would be to get a sample URL of the /oauth/authorize page that produces that error. (I believe a redirect happens with that error though, so make sure to get the original /oauth/authorize URL, not the redirected /home URL.)

2. The "timeout for request to ... /files/move" issue sounds unrelated, as that's an entirely different endpoint. As you said, it is possible it's due to his network connection (or anything that may be interfering with it) or possibly an issue on our servers. If it's transient and not reproducible, it's likely the former. The best practice for API apps is to do some automatic retrying anyway, since there are plenty of ways for things to fail like that, due to network conditions, etc. If it's reliably reproducible though, and other API calls don't fail, that would indicate an issue on our side. In that case, if you could share steps to reproduce the issue and a sample request/response, we can look into it. (Just be sure to redact any secret values, e.g., the access token.) You can also open an API ticket if you'd prefer to share privately: https://www.dropbox.com/developers/contact

Hope this helps!