Dropbox Revamps Developer Guides for Core API Topics

The Dropbox API covers a wide range of functionality, and finding the right endpoints and concepts for a specific job can take time. To close that gap, Dropbox has published a set of new and updated developer guides on its reference site. Each guide walks through a large topic end to end, laying out the relevant concepts, API calls, and edge cases in one place.

The guides are meant to be living documents. Dropbox plans to keep updating them as the API evolves so developers have current information when building integrations.

Auth and File Handling

The OAuth Guide covers implementing an OAuth flow for a Dropbox app, including permissions (both scopes and legacy), content access, PKCE, refresh tokens, and user versus team tokens. A summary at the end helps you pick the right flow for your app type.

For apps that work with files, the File Access Guide explains how Dropbox represents files as metadata and which properties matter in practice. It also covers using different identifiers, traversing folders, handling special file types, and best practices for file operations.

Sharing and Extensions

The Sharing Guide explains how to use shared links, shared folders, and shared files through the API, along with considerations specific to each mechanism. Separate guidance exists for building a Dropbox Extension: the Extensions Guide walks through setup fields and how end users add the extension to their own Dropbox accounts.

Team-Focused Documentation

Two guides target apps that work with Dropbox Business teams. The Team Files Guide describes how team-linked apps interact with connected teams' files, covering namespaces, team folders, team spaces, folder policy management, and access control lists. It also explains the Dropbox-API-Path-Root, Dropbox-API-Select-User, and Dropbox-API-Select-Admin headers used to address team content.

For administration use cases, the Team Administration Guide covers user management (including user status), group management, and team-specific features like legal holds and secondary emails.

Performance and Reliability

The Performance Guide addresses integration performance: rate limits, file uploads, bulk file operations, and building at scale. It also covers lock contention, an error that can surface when many files are written to Dropbox simultaneously.

Error handling gets its own guide as well, covering error types in the Dropbox API, their causes, and recommended resolutions. The Error Handling Guide also offers best practices for minimizing the impact of common errors on the user experience.

Change Detection

Apps that need to react to file changes can consult the Detecting Changes Guide. It covers polling, longpoll, and webhooks as ways to check for, wait on, or receive notifications about changes to user files. The guide also explains listening for changes in Dropbox Teams and using the team event log, with a comparison table at the end to help choose the right mechanism for a given situation.

Ongoing Improvements

Dropbox is asking for feedback on the guides. Developers can report missing topics or suggest additions via Twitter, the Dropbox developer forum, or the Dropbox contact form.