Child Item

Large uploads via /get_temporary_upload_link are terminated with '413 Request Entity Too Large'

Hi!

I am uploading files via the temporarily upload links generated via the /get_temporary_upload_link call. This all works fine, but the POST upload call to the generated upload link (e.g. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/apitul/1/bNi....) is terminated for files larger than a certain limit.

> POST /apitul/1/bNi.... HTTP/1.1
Host: dl.dropboxusercontent.com
Accept: */*
Content-Length: 536871142
Expect: 100-continue
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=------------------------b315544e35df5ae3

< HTTP/1.1 413 Request Entity Too Large
< Server: nginx
< Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2019 10:10:15 GMT
< Content-Type: text/html
< Content-Length: 25658
< Connection: close
< ETag: "5c816ae0-643a"
< X-Dropbox-Request-Id: 9600532cf40be9d1ae39f8cdd6182848
< X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow, noimageindex
< Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=15552000; includeSubDomains
< 
* Closing connection 0

This test-file-200MB works fine but this larger test-file-512MB isn't working. The receiving Dropbox account has enough space available to store the large file.

Are there any uploads limits? If there are limits, is there another way to upload files to upload large files via the API without the need of an authorization token?

I appreciate if anyone can help me out with this issue.

Cheers!

Find more posts tagged with

API

Abuse

Accepted answers

Greg-DB

Unfortunately, the links returned by get_temporary_upload_link do have a file size limit, as you found. Apologies this isn't better documented! I'll ask the team to clarify this.

There isn't an alternative though, so that does mean that in this case, to upload large files, you'd need to either give the access token to the client to perform the upload session calls client-side (which isn't recommended for untrusted clients, of course), or send all of the data to upload through your server to perform the upload session calls there.

I'll also send this along as a feature request for a 'get_temporary_upload_link'-like version of upload sessions to support uploading large files without direct access to the access token, but I can't promise if or when that would be implemented.

All comments

Greg-DB

De L.1

Thanks for your quick reply, Greg!

It is indeed disappointing that this link has a file size limit as I basically need the upload possibility without access token for my application. Ofcourse, uploading via the server is possible but that doesn't really make sense for large files as it will take (~)twice as long to upload the files to Dropbox.

I would really appreciate it if Dropbox can support uploading of large files without access token for the upload session itself. Is there a specific reason why you think that this cannot be implemented? The other major APIs like the ones for Google One, OneDrive/Sharepoint and Box do support direct uploads where the initial upload link is obtained in the same way as the get_temporary_upload_link' call.

Greg-DB

Thanks for the feedback! I can't speak to the technical feasibility, so I can't say that it couldn't be implemented. I've sent this along as a feature request, but I can't promise this is something the team will be working on.

De L.1

Thanks! Could you add the decision of the team about this feature request in this topic or is there a specific place where I can follow this feature request?

Greg-DB

I'll be sure to follow up on this thread with any updates on this request.

De L.1

I forgot to ask... could you let me know what the current file size limit is so I can set that in my application?

Greg-DB

Officially, the limit is 150 MB, the same as /2/files/upload itself. Some uploads larger than that will still work, as in your example, but we don't recommend it as they become less reliable. (The strict cut off, where the request will get rejected with a 413 error, is 300 MB.)

Jens S.1

Please add this information to the documentation and +1 for the feature request. Thanks.

Greg-DB

@Jens S.1 Thanks for the note!

raRaRa

+1 on this feature request. My product currently supports uploading media files to Google Drive and Google Photos with a temp link, which works great for large files. It's a bit disappointing that this isn't possible with the Dropbox API due to the small file size limit, but hopefully this feature request gets a higher priority if more people need this.

Thanks.

Greg-DB

@raRaRa Thanks for the additional feedback and context!

Kirk Schneider

Has a decision been made regarding this?

Greg-DB

@Kirk Schneider No, unfortunately I don't have an update on this request.

MARPAT

I'd also like to put my support behind letting larger files be uploaded through a temporary upload link. Perhaps there are restrictions in place that prevent Dropbox from raising the file upload limit, in which case I would suggest creating another endpoint similar to upload_session and its associated functions, but using the temporary upload link instead of authorization.

Greg-DB

@MARPAT Thanks for the feedback!

Matias_FAC

hello, will you have any decision made regarding the length of the file? I am starting a new project and I require this functionality but for files larger than 15GB

Greg-DB

@Matias_FAC No, I don't have an update on this request.

julio_diniz_perdigao

Hi @raRaRa ,

what's the method you use wiht Drive API to upload with temporary link, as you describe here? Didn't find any info.

Thanks!