nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Child Item

Api v1 - can I create Permanent Direct Url ?

Victor V.3

Hi Dropbox community,

In my application, I am caching a list of internal objects which represent a list of excel files in dropbox. For each internal object I am generating a temporary direct url using api v1. I've read in a different post, that this url experies after 4 hours [https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/204324265-I-m-saving-a-file-url-by-using-dropin-api-after-a-while-that-url-starts-to-give-401-]. \

Is there a way to generate a permanent download link ? What other options do I have via dropbox api ?

If not, my option would be to set up a 4 hour recurring task, that refreshes my cache, in order to generate a new functional download links for my endusers.

thanks,

-victor

Find more posts tagged with

API

Abuse

Comments

Greg-DB

The Dropbox API doesn't currently offer a way to generate permanent direct links like that, but I'll be sure to pass this along as a feature request.

What exactly do you need it for? If you just need to download file content, the normal download endpoints are the best option:

v1: https://www.dropbox.com/developers-v1/core/docs#files-GET
v2: https://www.dropbox.com/developers/documentation/http/documentation#files-download

Those return the data directly though, not via a URL.

If you really need links, the only current workaround is to use a shared link:

v1: https://www.dropbox.com/developers-v1/core/docs#shares
v2: https://www.dropbox.com/developers/documentation/http/documentation#sharing-create_shared_link_with_settings

Those don't offer direct file access by default, but can be modified as necessary. This isn't recommended though, as these links are listed to the user on https://www.dropbox.com/links which may confuse them as to why they exist. These links are also subject to bandwidth limits.

Victor V.3

Hi Gregory,

Thanks a lot for your answer and sorry for replying late.

A common use case for my internal app would be to generate a new file and upload it to dropbox via the api v1. For the end users of my app, this file would be represented as a report, which they would possible want to download through our own UI. The download url would have been set at creation time, when uploading the file, whereas the download could occur a week later for example, or never . However, this is not a problem. Now that I know about the 4 hour limit, I can generate the download url on demand, when the user needs to download the file.