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Using Curl & Dropbox API to upload files to a DB request link

I am wanting to create a BASH script in Linux to use when I need to load media files to a Dropbox request link that a group of mine uses for collaboration. How would I do this with curl? The link is in the form of https://www.dropbox.com/request/[REDACTED]. The web interface requests a NAME and an EMAIL ADDRESS when I hit upload. Can I just parse that in with the API? Is this a feasible task to accomplish? I am usually in a terminal shell and I could save myself time by just running a script to upload the file without having to jump into a browser.

something like this:

$> ./mydbupload.sh mycoolvideo.mp4

I would then edit my script to pass the my argument (ie. mycoolvideo.mp4) into a curl command.

Please advise.

Thanks!

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Здравко

@Rockymtns99 wrote:
I am wanting to create a BASH script ... to load media files to a Dropbox request link ... How would I do this with curl? ...

Hi @Rockymtns99,

I don't think it's possible in such a way. If this was possible, that would be a throughput way for something like spam. 🙂

@Rockymtns99 wrote:
... Can I just parse that in with the API? Is this a feasible task to accomplish? I am usually in a terminal shell and I could save myself time by just running a script to upload the file without having to jump into a browser. ...

Good questions and good idea! 😉

Unfortunately, there isn't a bash SDK. You can create something without SDK by using direct calls to curl, actually. Following API documentation, the simplest way is to create, by hand, a refresh token and save it in some configuration file. Next in your script you can read the refresh token, saved before, and using /oauth2/token call receive access token. Using the access token you can call all other API calls. It expires relatively soon, stays valid more than enough. Using /upload call smaller files could be uploaded directly. For bigger files (more than 150MB) you should gonna create upload session using /upload_session/start call and following calls.

For more sophisticated script, you can create a pseudo server using netcat to perform OAuth flow in addition to curl usage. 👌 "bash" is powerful enough to parse the query containing code/token/etc.

Hope this gives idea.

All comments

Greg-DB

Dropbox unfortunately doesn't offer a way to programmatically upload to file requests like this, but I'll pass this along as a feature request. I can't promise if or when that might be implemented though.

Здравко

@Rockymtns99 wrote:
I am wanting to create a BASH script ... to load media files to a Dropbox request link ... How would I do this with curl? ...

Hi @Rockymtns99,

I don't think it's possible in such a way. If this was possible, that would be a throughput way for something like spam. 🙂

@Rockymtns99 wrote:
... Can I just parse that in with the API? Is this a feasible task to accomplish? I am usually in a terminal shell and I could save myself time by just running a script to upload the file without having to jump into a browser. ...

Good questions and good idea! 😉

Hope this gives idea.

Rockymtns99

Thanks. That makes sense. I was hoping that there would be an easy way to call a curl command from a script to do quick uploads to the request link but, it sounds like it isn't as simple as I thought.

TTimo

This would be very useful!