Child Item

Team Folder Webhook Not Detecting File Uploads in Specific Subfolder

Hi everyone,

I'm having trouble with Dropbox Business API webhooks not detecting file uploads in a specific team folder subfolder, even though the user has access via the web interface.

My Requirement:
I want the webhook to trigger when:
- Any user uploads a file with a specific extension (e.g., .png)
- Into a specific team folder subfolder (e.g., /Team Folder/Upload Directory/)
- Then my webhook should take the file and upload it to S3 for further processing

Setup:
- Using Dropbox Business API with team access token
- Webhook configured and triggers on file upload
- User can view/edit the target folder in Dropbox web UI
- Using Dropbox-API-Select-User and Dropbox-API-Path-Root headers

Problem:
When listing folders via API (/files/list_folder), I can see:
- /Team Folder/Clients - Subscribers/ ✅ (hundreds of files/folders)
- But NOT /Team Folder/test/Upload Directory/ ❌ (completely missing)

The user can access both folders in the web interface, but the API only shows one of them.

Current API calls:
// Get user's root namespace
const rootNamespaceId = await getUserRootNamespace(userId);

// List folders with proper headers
fetch('https://api.dropboxapi.com/2/files/list_folder', {
headers: {
'Authorization': `Bearer ${TEAM_ACCESS_TOKEN}`,
'Dropbox-API-Select-User': userId,
'Dropbox-API-Path-Root': JSON.stringify({".tag": "namespace_id", "namespace_id": rootNamespaceId}),
},
body: JSON.stringify({ path: '', recursive: true })
});

Questions:
1. Why would some team folders be visible via API while others aren't, even when the user has web access to both?
2. Are there different permission scopes needed for different team folder types?
3. Should I be using a different namespace ID or path-root configuration?
4. Could this be related to how the team folders were originally created or shared?

Any insights would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

DB-Des

Hi @pAir

Please note that any changes in shared folders, even made by other users, should trigger webhook notifications for your linked app, as long as the shared folder is in a connected account and available to your app, per the app's permission.

As far as your second enquiry, what happens when you provide the specific path "/Team Folder/test/Upload Directory/" as the value to the 'path' parameter, are you getting an error?

pAir

no error, but what’s the purpose of that path? If I provide my target folder path, will it only trigger the webhook when a file is uploaded to it? The biggest challenge I’m currently facing is that it’s scanning files from all users account. However, I only want the webhook to run and scan a new file upload(any users) from my target folder, which is /Team Folder/test/Upload Directory/.

is that possible?

DB-Des

@pAir

It’s not currently possible to limit webhook notifications to a specific folder.

As outlined in our Webhooks documentation, once you register a URI to receive webhooks, Dropbox sends an HTTP request to that endpoint whenever there’s a change in any of the accounts connected to your app — not just a specific path or folder.