General direction

Question

So I am writing a Node js application for my company.  We already have a business Dropbox account.  The app will monitor a company network folder and upload files to our Dropbox folder for one of our vendors to process.  I've already created an app within the app console to use its own folder.  Generated tokens work fine, but then I try to go through the authorization flow, all the dropbox-v2-api examples involve opening a browser and authenticating.

My app will be running in a VM without user intervention.  This makes me think that I'm not understanding the use method for these "apps".  If I work just in the file system and install the Dropbox client (sync) software, I get some popups asking if I'm sure I want to perform a task (like delete a file).

Help me to understand how I'm supposed to proceed.

Thanks for your time,

jhoybs

DB-Des · Accepted Answer

Hi there!

Based on some of the information you have provided, you will want to ensure the app you have created has "App folder" access and not "Full Dropbox".  You can confirm this information by navigating to your Dropbox account's App Console and looking at the "Permission type" for the app.

As a reminder, "App folder "access means your app will get read and write access to the app's specific folder, exclusively, inside users' Dropbox. An app with "Full Dropbox" access will get full access to all the files and folders in your users' Dropbox. You can learn more about permissions in the developer guide's App permissions section.

As far as authorization and access tokens, if your app will be running with minimal to no user interaction, you will want to request an access token with offline access, by including the parameter token_access_type=offline in the authorization URL, when your app is authorized by a user for the first time:

https://www.dropbox.com/oauth2/authorize?client_id=<APP_KEY>&token_access_type=offline&response_type=code

For further clarification, feel free to review the Dropbox OAuth Guide.