You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
How to get OAuth 2.0 token
How do I get an OAuth 2.0 token with the account I created app without login?
NLOG The user will always need to sign in to Dropbox in order to authorize your app. That applies to your own account, e.g., when signing in to Dropbox to access the app's page on the App Console to use the "Generate" button, or other end-user accounts, when using the OAuth flow.
Access tokens don't effectively expire on their own, but they can be revoked by the user or app at any time. That being the case, your app can store and re-use the access tokens, once recieved, without further manual user intervention, but it should be aware that they can become invalid at any time. If they do, you can prompt the user to re-authorize the app if they wish to continue using it.
- Walter
Dropbox Staff
Hey NLOG - Welcome to the Dropbox Forum!
I am not really an expert on our APIs but I think you should take a look at this page first. If you stumble upon an issue, please get back to us with a screenshot of the error you get ( if any) and we'll take it from there.
I hope this helps and let us know how this goes for you.
Thanks!
- Will this token remain valid until it is reissued?
- Walter
When working with the Dropbox APIs, your app will access the Dropbox service on behalf of your users. You'll need to have each user of your app authenticate with Dropbox to both verify their identity and give your app permission to access their data on Dropbox.
Dropbox uses OAuth 2, an open specification, for this purpose. Once completed by a user, the OAuth process returns an access token to your app. The access token is a string generated by Dropbox that you'll need to send with each subsequent API request to uniquely identify both your app and the end user.
Mind that there are several reasons we use OAuth. Most importantly, your application doesn't need to store (or transmit for that matter) the user's Dropbox password. OAuth also enables the user to authorize only a limited set of permissions and the user may revoke access at any time they wish. This makes OAuth a safer and more secure form of API authorization for your users.
I hope this information helps clear this up.
Cheers!
- Greg-DB
NLOG The user will always need to sign in to Dropbox in order to authorize your app. That applies to your own account, e.g., when signing in to Dropbox to access the app's page on the App Console to use the "Generate" button, or other end-user accounts, when using the OAuth flow.
Access tokens don't effectively expire on their own, but they can be revoked by the user or app at any time. That being the case, your app can store and re-use the access tokens, once recieved, without further manual user intervention, but it should be aware that they can become invalid at any time. If they do, you can prompt the user to re-authorize the app if they wish to continue using it.
About Dropbox API Support & Feedback
Find help with the Dropbox API from other developers.
