restored folders and files have different ids than their originally added entities

sbrownnw

given dropbox UI has no folders or files in it

when I create a subfolder

and add file1 to the subfolder

and add file2 to the subfolder

and note the ids for the new subfolder and two new files

and when I delete the subfolder

and when I restore file1

then the restored subfolder id is different than the originally added one in step 2

and the restored file1 id is different than the originally added one in step 3

 

why is this?  it seems like an entity's id (primary key for folder or file) should always stay the same whether it is deleted, restored or whatever.

Greg-DB

In the "restore file1" step, you're only restoring the file itself, not the original folder. When adding or restoring a file, if a parent path component (the folder, in this case) doesn't already exist, it will be automatically created. That automatically created folder is a new folder, not a restored folder (and it may or may not be at the same path as the original parent folder, e.g., since you can restore a file to a different location).

 

As for the file ID of the restored file itself, I would expect that to be the same, and it is in my testing. Here's an example I just ran through:

curl -X POST https://api.dropboxapi.com/2/files/create_folder_v2 \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"path":"/test_691719_folder"}'

# {
#   "metadata": {
#     "name": "test_691719_folder",
#     "path_lower": "/test_691719_folder",
#     "path_display": "/test_691719_folder",
#     "id": "id:25N5ksooX-sAAAAAAAQyqA"
#   }
# }  

curl -X POST https://content.dropboxapi.com/2/files/upload \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/octet-stream' \
  --header 'Dropbox-API-Arg: {"path":"/test_691719_folder/test_691719_file"}' \
  --data-binary @'test.txt'

# {
#   "name": "test_691719_file",
#   "path_lower": "/test_691719_folder/test_691719_file",
#   "path_display": "/test_691719_folder/test_691719_file",
#   "id": "id:25N5ksooX-sAAAAAAAQyqQ",
#   "client_modified": "2023-06-14T18:42:28Z",
#   "server_modified": "2023-06-14T18:42:29Z",
#   "rev": "5fe1b50581a7c021eccc7",
#   "size": 27,
#   "is_downloadable": true,
#   "content_hash": "cceac37da5288a6b6716737310c14305c9b16a6e0ff0abce4a306c3de3a59f75"
# }

curl -X POST https://api.dropboxapi.com/2/files/delete_v2 \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"path":"/test_691719_folder"}'

# {
#   "metadata": {
#     ".tag": "folder",
#     "name": "test_691719_folder",
#     "path_lower": "/test_691719_folder",
#     "path_display": "/test_691719_folder",
#     "id": "id:25N5ksooX-sAAAAAAAQyqA"
#   }
# }

curl -X POST https://api.dropboxapi.com/2/files/restore \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"path":"/test_691719_folder/test_691719_file","rev":"5fe1b50581a7c021eccc7"}'

# {
#   "name": "test_691719_file",
#   "path_lower": "/test_691719_folder/test_691719_file",
#   "path_display": "/test_691719_folder/test_691719_file",
#   "id": "id:25N5ksooX-sAAAAAAAQyqQ",
#   "client_modified": "2023-06-14T18:42:28Z",
#   "server_modified": "2023-06-14T18:43:47Z",
#   "rev": "5fe1b5501cafb021eccc7",
#   "size": 27,
#   "is_downloadable": true,
#   "content_hash": "cceac37da5288a6b6716737310c14305c9b16a6e0ff0abce4a306c3de3a59f75"
# }  

curl -X POST https://api.dropboxapi.com/2/files/get_metadata \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"path":"/test_691719_folder"}'

# {
#   ".tag": "folder",
#   "name": "test_691719_folder",
#   "path_lower": "/test_691719_folder",
#   "path_display": "/test_691719_folder",
#   "id": "id:25N5ksooX-sAAAAAAAQyrA"
# }

curl -X POST https://api.dropboxapi.com/2/files/get_metadata \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"path":"/test_691719_folder/test_691719_file"}'  

# {
#   ".tag": "file",
#   "name": "test_691719_file",
#   "path_lower": "/test_691719_folder/test_691719_file",
#   "path_display": "/test_691719_folder/test_691719_file",
#   "id": "id:25N5ksooX-sAAAAAAAQyqQ",
#   "client_modified": "2023-06-14T18:42:28Z",
#   "server_modified": "2023-06-14T18:43:47Z",
#   "rev": "5fe1b5501cafb021eccc7",
#   "size": 27,
#   "is_downloadable": true,
#   "content_hash": "cceac37da5288a6b6716737310c14305c9b16a6e0ff0abce4a306c3de3a59f75"
# }

If something's not working properly for you though, please share the steps/code to reproduce the issue and show us the unexpected output or error so we can look into it.