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Direct Media Link are expiring...

Hey Community.

Quick context: I'm pulling a file from a Jot Form to Airtable to Dropbox via Zapier. The last part of my Zap is dropping a "direct media link" in airtable as a URL lnk field that can be accessed later without killing stoage limits...

Anyways, everything was working perfectly, until I tried to access the download link the next day, aka, the "direct media link" it said:

"{"error": "The link has expired."}

I looked at my link sharing settings, and there is no expiry on any of the links... so i'm a bit stumped.

I like the "direct media link" because it's a clean way and direct way for people accessing the airtable to download the file we save without drawing adding a another step going to dropbox, and for that matter showing we're using dropbox.

Does anyone know how to make these not expire? does anyone know why they are expiring? is there any work around? Any help would be superhelpful!

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Comments

Greg-DB

Based on the description and output here, it sounds like this integration is using the /2/files/get_temporary_link endpoint. The links from this endpoint are supposed to expire, and are only meant for temporary use.

If you need non-temporary links, you should use shared links instead, which an app can get via /2/sharing/create_shared_link_with_settings. That's a change the developer of the app would need to make though (which seems to be Zapier, in this case), so you may want to ask them to do so. (These links can be modified for "direct" access, if needed.)

camg55

Hey Greg,

Intesting... yeah, that makes sense.

What's annoying about it, is for some reason Zapier gives me a short link, so I can't edit what it has within it after I drop it in airtable via a formula... I've reached out to zapier, to see if they can do something, but in a perfect world i'd just force download it with a formuma on my own...

sahir

Same issue here.. I have tickets open with both Zapier and Dropbox. Any luck with this?

Exactly the same conclusion they give a short link so cant append it. I hope zapier does something

Greg-DB

@sahir I don't have anything to add on the Dropbox side. The Dropbox API still offers both of these pieces of functionality, so it would be up to Zapier to update their implementation.

fivestar1

Old thread, but this can be done by modifying the dropbox share link which by default are formatted this way:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/someuniqueID/filename.fileextension?dl=0

If you simply change the parameter at the end from "dl=0" to "dl=1" the link will be a direct media download link instead of rendering in dropbox UI in the browser. IF you are populating Airtable with share links, this formula will transform the default share link into a download link for you:

LEFT({Dropbox Share Link}, LEN({Dropbox Share Link})-1)&"1"