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
Issue with Dropbox API Integration - Error 401 (Unauthorized)
Recently, I added a new folder named "App" to my Dropbox account and uploaded some files, including "addressable" files. After doing so, I obtained all the necessary data (key, secret, and token thro...
Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffIf you're getting a 401 error after a few hours, that's likely because you're using an expired short-lived access token. The response body should contain 'expired_access_token' in that case.
For reference, Dropbox is no longer offering the option for creating new long-lived access tokens. Dropbox is now issuing short-lived access tokens (and optional refresh tokens) instead of long-lived access tokens. You can find more information on this migration here.
Apps can still get long-term access by requesting "offline" access though, in which case the app receives a "refresh token" that can be used to retrieve new short-lived access tokens as needed, without further manual user intervention. You can find more information in the OAuth Guide and authorization documentation. There's a basic outline of processing this flow in this blog post which may serve as a useful example.
In any case, print out the response body for any 4xx error you get from the API so you can check for an error message. The error message should indicate why the call failed.
If you still need help, please reply with:
- the name and version number of the platform and SDK/library you are using, if any
- the steps to reproduce the issue, including relevant code snippet(s), but don't include any access or refresh token(s)
- the full text of any error or unexpected output, including the response body
About Dropbox API Support & Feedback
Find help with the Dropbox API from other developers.
