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
MikkBenelis
7 months agoHelpful | Level 5
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...
- 7 months ago
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 🙂
Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
MikkBenelis As Здравко said, it doesn't sound like this is exactly the same as the original issue in the thread you posted in, so I've moved your message to its own thread.
If you still need help with this, please share a sample of the full request and response, including both headers and bodies for both, so we can take a look. Please redact any secret values though.
MikkBenelis
7 months agoHelpful | Level 5
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-DB7 months agoDropbox Staff
A 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.
- MikkBenelis7 months agoHelpful | Level 5
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.
- Здравко7 months agoLegendary | Level 20
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.
About Dropbox API Support & Feedback
Find help with the Dropbox API from other developers.
5,915 PostsLatest Activity: 6 years agoIf you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.
For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.
If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!