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Forum Discussion
Implementing Dropbox features in a custom file explorer: API limitations for desktop apps?
I'm developing a desktop application as an alternative to Windows Explorer / macOS Finder and want to integrate the following Dropbox features: 1. Reading thumbnails for images and other supported f...
No, Dropbox does not offer a way to programmatically retrieve thumbnails locally without having the user authorize the app to access their content via the Dropbox API.
Здравко Greg-DB Thank you for your replies.
I understand that desktop applications can also use the API by http calls, to clarify, I want to know if the following are the only ways to get thumbnails(and other features), despite my software having full access to the local Dropbox folder:
1. register my app in dropbox app console
2. when users want to visit the local dropbox folder in my application, I need to proactively inform and get manual approvals from users to acquire dropbox API auth token via OAuth
3. for all the local image files displayed within my software, request the thumbnails via Dropbox API
Other than the above procedures, there is no other direct way to get the thumbnails, despite the software already having full access to local disks, is this correct?
Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffYes, as Здравко said, if you want to just access the file data locally, you can do so without using the API. If you want to have Dropbox generate thumbnails for you though, you'd need to use the API/OAuth flow.
And yes, it looks like there are some formatting issues in that help center article, so I'll ask the team to fix that up. Thanks!
Здравко Greg-DB Thank you for your replies, I think I can do better explanations. Like Windows explorer and mac finder, my file browser also displays files in a grid layout with thumbnails representing each file. When users are visiting the dropbox folder in my file browser, ideally, I would like to display small image thumbnails for image files. Although I can create thumbnails by analyzing the image files themselves, this can be time-consuming and take system resources, and it will trigger dropbox to sync down the files set to online-only by users, which isn't ideal. Since dropbox already generates thumbnails for such images and can display the thumbnails properly in windows explorer, I am wondering if my app can do the same - requesting existing thumbnails from Dropbox API(without analyzing the file and generating the thumbnail on my side), and without asking users to authorize via OAuth. This means, are there ways to acquire thumbnails available locally? (not by requesting from online file mirrors)
I hope my question is clear enough this time. Thank you all in advance.
LewisO wrote:...
I hope my question is clear enough this time. ...
Your question is clear all the time LewisO. 😉 You haven't read my initial post here though:
Здравко wrote:...
In fact there are such implementations - all plugins you want to mimic use such interfaces. Unfortunately, all those interfaces are not documented and, in this context, difficult to use.
...
That's it! 🤷 Unfortunately... No such supported way currently.
- Greg-DB
No, Dropbox does not offer a way to programmatically retrieve thumbnails locally without having the user authorize the app to access their content via the Dropbox API.
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