Scripting the Dropbox API

I am a big fan of Dropbox and have been for some time. One of my things is to have bin and lib directories so a lot of the tools I write for myself are available on all my hosts.

The issue is that Dropbox’s client for Linux wants to exist in context of a desktop, and there are places, such as a research cluster or a hosted machine, where there’s no desktop running and the Dropbox client won’t work.

But don’t worry. Dropbox has an API. And Perl has a library. Well, libraries, but I like and use WebService::Dropbox. Your first step is to use the App Console and get all the keys and you need.

I put all that into YAML so that I can share the code at will, without worrying about sharing keys, but maybe you like JSON or INI files or something. Whatever you do, make sure that you chmod your stuff so that only you can access it, especially if you’re running this on a shared resource.

---
key: gec7xnarw6yy3w8
secret: ioq7dyn412v833m
token: u1viTaKGoFNtAi6aekV4JMMd81HTSeFOn3LN-6m6pUvI1Vd867utfHmfzMVwrO2I
note: "Not my keys, but random numbers I generated. Don't share yours either."

And here is my program, dropbox_copy.pl. If you wanted to download a bin directory from Dropbox, you’d run dropbox_copy.pl -d bin.

#!/home/djacoby/webserver/perl/bin/perl

# This program is used to download a Dropbox directory onto a machine
# without Dropbox tools installed

use strict;
use warnings;
use utf8;
use feature qw{ postderef say signatures state };
no warnings qw{ experimental::postderef experimental::signatures };

use Carp;
use IO::File;
use JSON;
use Getopt::Long;
use Pod::Usage;
use WebService::Dropbox;
use YAML qw{LoadFile};
use File::Path qw{make_path};

my $json = JSON->new->canonical->pretty;
my $config = config();
my $dropbox = WebService::Dropbox->new( { key => $config->{key}, } );

# Authorization
if ( $config->{token} ) {
    $dropbox->access_token( $config->{token} );
}
else {
    my $url = $dropbox->authorize;

    print "Please Access URL and press Enter: $url\n";
    print "Please Input Code: ";
    chomp( my $code = <STDIN> );
    unless ( $dropbox->token($code) ) {
        die $dropbox->error;
    }
    print "Successfully authorized.\nYour AccessToken: ",
        $dropbox->access_token, "\n";
}

if ( $config->{directory} ) {
    my $remote = '/' . $config->{directory};
    get_dir( $remote, $dropbox );
}

exit;

# get_dir() takes $remote, the directory to be copied,
# and a WebService::Dropbox object. I am on an anti-globals
# kick but otherwise would've kept that and just passed $remote

sub get_dir ( $remote, $dropbox ) {
    my $local = join '', $ENV{HOME}, '/Dropbox', $remote;
    if ( !-d $local ) { make_path($local) }
    my $result = $dropbox->list_folder($remote);
    for my $e ( $result->{entries}->@* ) {

        # if it's a folder/directory, recurse
        if ( $e->{'.tag'} eq 'folder' ) {
            my $next = $e->{path_display};
            get_dir( $next, $dropbox );
        }

        # if it's a file, we download it
        if ( $e->{'.tag'} eq 'file' ) {
            my $file = $e->{path_display};
            get_file( $file, $dropbox );
        }
    }
}

# get_file() takes $remote, the file to be copied, and a
# WebService::Dropbox object

sub get_file ( $remote, $dropbox ) {
    my $local = join '', $ENV{HOME}, '/Dropbox', $remote;
    my $fh = IO::File->new( $local, '>' );
    my $response = $dropbox->download( $remote, $fh );

    # say $json->encode($response);
}

# one-stop shop to get the Dropbox configuration and the flags.

sub config () {
    my $config_file = $ENV{HOME} . '/.dropbox.yml';
    croak 'No Config' unless -f $config_file;
    my $config = LoadFile($config_file);
    $config->{download} = 0;
    $config->{upload} = 0;
    GetOptions(
        'help' => \$config->{help},
        'man' => \$config->{man},
        'directory=s' => \$config->{directory},
    );

    pod2usage( -verbose => 2, -exitval => 1 ) if $config->{man};
    pod2usage( -verbose => 1, -exitval => 1 ) if $config->{help};
    pod2usage( -verbose => 1, -exitval => 1 )
        unless $config->{directory} =~ /\w/;
    delete $config->{help};
    delete $config->{man};
    return $config;
}

exit;

=head1 NAME

dropbox_copy.pl - Download a directory from Dropbox

=head1 SYNOPSIS

    dropbox_copy.pl -d 'Images'

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This program copies whole directories from Dropbox

=head1 OPTIONS

=over 4

=item B<-d>, B<--directory>

The name of the directory to be copied.

=item B<-h>, B<--help>

Short-form user documentation

=item B<-m>, B<--manual>

Long-form user documentation

=back

=head1 LICENSE

This is released under the Artistic
License. See L<perlartistic>.

=head1 AUTHOR

Dave Jacoby L<[e-mail]>

=cut

As a GitHub Gist

I should make better tools like this, with listing directories and downloading files and uploading. I should make a repo with all this stuff. This would allow others to help make it better. And because Dropbox owns the name “Dropbox”, I should come up with another name.

But, in the meantime, please enjoy.

If you have any questions or comments, I would be glad to hear it. Ask me on Twitter or make an issue on my blog repo.