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Forum Discussion
400 status code for a regular GET request
Seems like I'm facing the same or really similar issue. Just wanted to try Dropbox for my pet-project read-only data storage and found that it always responds with a 400 status code for a regular GET...
Hi Здравко, Greg-DB and sorry for the late response. Today I finally managed to understand the root cause of the issue and found a workaround to it. It is not related to the extra new line I thought earlier, but it is something with the redirect URL received after the first GET request. I was a bit confused by the automatic redirects everywhere so the actual error was tied to the second request. Below are my test scenario, issue description and a workaround.
Test scenario:
1. Send a GET request to this URL: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fc5rwkff82yvy66ktagv7/test.txt?rlkey=wqzs2qbbfazbgj3ttcaik9pq2&dl=1
2. Receive a 302 Found response with this header: Location: https://ucf3d30d8449d3b4b71630f2179a.dl.dropboxusercontent.com/cd/0/get/CUfGJ4UYzNP3f_SeeyAWDmkzqSHoJk98QNNmD7g4NUoVFnAS6PpVPrCmKLfGBS9_fNsxCkcNG3dT40ygtSc8ceWPxLQYy-NiCrRMDxJ-5u_ZftDOnRmXk-ta_m1czPFq5KRSEvknl3F7pFjk01onJrqL/file?dl=1#
3. Follow the redirect URL and get a 400 Bad Request response. Note: the URL above expires quite early, it'll return the 410 response now, but it is expected and not the actual issue.
Issue and workaround:
The redirect URL contains the # character at the end which causes the 400 response. It is interesting that both curl and Postman remove this character so that is why it is not reproduced there. Removing this character manually before following the redirect fixes the issue and I can get a valid response in my environment as well.
Not sure why this character is a part of the URL and if it is an HTTP rule, Dropbox bug or bug of the underlaying library I'm using, but at least now I have a clean understanding of the issue and a workaround for it. I want to know your thoughts about it and then if it is a library bug, I'll redirect it to its developer 🙂
First of all, there is a chance that this problem is relevant to software I'm using, but when I tried Google Drive and a couple of other direct links for the same task it worked properly. It would be nice if you can help me capture the request details because I don't have low-level access to this library and since it is a TLS request, I can't capture it normally with Wireshark. I can send my minimal executable if it is acceptable, but I think it is better to point me to the way of TLS traffic capturing and decrypting.
I'm sending a regular GET request with the manually added "Host" header with the value of "www.dropbox.com" just in case if it is not calculated automatically (I found that it is required in Postman). Below is the actual URL and all of the response details that I have.
URL is: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fc5rwkff82yvy66ktagv7/test.txt?rlkey=wqzs2qbbfazbgj3ttcaik9pq2&dl=1
Response code: 400
Headers:
- Content-Length: 1005
- Content-Type: text/html
- Vary: Accept-Encoding
- X-Dropbox-Response-Origin: local
- Date: Mon, 03 Jun 2024 16:39:53 GMT
- Server: envoy
- Connection: close
Body:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
<title>Dropbox - 400</title>
<link href="https://cfl.dropboxstatic.com/static/metaserver/static/css/error.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="https://cfl.dropboxstatic.com/static/images/favicon.ico"/>
</head>
<body>
<div class="figure">
<img src="https://assets.dropbox.com/www/en-us/illustrations/spot/target-miss.svg" alt="Error: 400"/>
</div>
<div id="errorbox">
<h1>Error (400)</h1>Something went wrong. Don't worry, your files are still safe and the Dropbox team has been notified. Check out our <a href="https://status.dropbox.com">Status Page</a> to see if there is a known incident, our <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/help">Help Center</a> and <a href="https://forums.dropbox.com">forums</a> for help, or head back to <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/home">home</a>.
</div>
</body>
</html>
Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffA response like that should indicate that the request was malformed, so we'd want to see the raw HTTP request you're sending. Unfortunately we can't provide guidance on how to get that kind of logging from your client though, as the client itself isn't made by Dropbox. You may need to refer to the client's documentation or support resources.
I'm trying to dump the raw HTTP request, but not sure that it'll be possible with the high-level API that I have... Is it possible to track the request on your side? The error message says "the Dropbox team has been notified" so I assume it is logged somewhere and maybe I can provide some sort of request ID or something.
Hi MikkBenelis,
I hope you know what netcat is and how it's used. If you transform https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fc5rwkff82yvy66ktagv7/test.txt?rlkey=wqzs2qbbfazbgj3ttcaik9pq2&dl=1 to something like http://localhost:8080/scl/fi/fc5rwkff82yvy66ktagv7/test.txt?rlkey=wqzs2qbbfazbgj3ttcaik9pq2&dl=1 or similar, you'll be able see exactly what's in your HTTP request. 😉 Do left everything else the same.
Hope this gives direction.
Hey, you are a genius, simple and clean suggestion 🙂
As a backend developer, I don't know why I did not thought about it...
So the failing library produced this request:
GET /scl/fi/fc5rwkff82yvy66ktagv7/test.txt?rlkey=wqzs2qbbfazbgj3ttcaik9pq2&dl=1 HTTP/1.1 Host: www.dropbox.com Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate User-Agent: GodotEngine/4.2.2.stable.official (Windows) Accept: */*And this what was produced by Postman (added headers to match previous request):
GET /scl/fi/fc5rwkff82yvy66ktagv7/test.txt?rlkey=wqzs2qbbfazbgj3ttcaik9pq2&dl=1 HTTP/1.1 Host: www.dropbox.com Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate User-Agent: GodotEngine/4.2.2.stable.official (Windows) Accept: */*The only difference is this extra new line at the end. I can't control it since it is an external library. And it means that the issue is exactly the same in original thread where I posted my message. Potentially, we are using same libraries.
- Greg-DB
Unfortunately I can't retrieve the original raw HTTP request itself, even with the request ID.
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