Access file(xlsx) data programmatically

Question

What I want to do is acess data from an .xlsx-file stored inside my dropbox with the help of some javascript and then use that data inside a graph displayed on a website.

What I have done so far is to use the Dropbox API to gain access to a SharedLink. This makes it possible for me to access the file manually when I click the link but I get errors when I try to access the xlsx-data with javascript from that link because it cant recognize it as en xlsx when in the preview format provided by the SharedLink.

Is there a way to get a direct link to the file without having to download it the way dl.dropbox.com/..... does or can I access the data in another way?

Thanks in advance

Greg-DB · Accepted Answer

First, if you're not already, we recommend using the official Dropbox API v2 JavaScript SDK.

Using that, if you want to directly access file data, the standard way to do so is using the filesDownload method. You can access the resulting file data via the 'fileBlob' field on the returned object, the same as shown in this example.

Or, if you need a URL directly to the file on the Dropbox servers, you can instead use the filesGetTemporaryLink method. The resulting FilesGetTemporaryLinkResult.link will be a temporary direct link to the file data on Dropbox.