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bill_hertzing's avatar
bill_hertzing
Explorer | Level 3
4 years ago
Solved

API for folder activity (Pro plan)

Is there an API that will tell me how many changes occurred in a folder within a specified date range? 

Specifically, I've had situations where turning on a days-long unpowered laptop or desktop seems to make Dropbox think it should revert everything to the Dropbox folder's contents as it was on the day the laptop was turned off. I have to manually visit (in dropbox.com) many folders to see if there is a spike in activity on the day the laptop was turned back on, then rewind those folders to the day before. An API that would return the list of files that were modified in a folder (or even just a count), on a specific day or range of days, would make automating this easier.

 

While List_folder will give me the folder's files at a specific point in time, and https://developers.dropbox.com/detecting-changes-guide discusses using cursors as a 'point in time',  if I want to track changes made in a folder over time, I would have to implement a tracking DB, fetch a cursor for each folder daily, update the DB, then write a complicated program to fetch the folder's contents for each daily cursor in a date range, and compare the contents between two cursors, to find out which folders got a heavy set of changes.

 

Dropbox has this information already, The rewind feature on dropbox.com shows the activity in a folder per week for the last 4 weeks (pro plan) - is there an API that can surface this information?

 

Note: I found https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/Read-a-folders-activity-with-the-dropbox-api/m-p/397009#M21782 which is very similar, in which the responder mentioned he would pass it along as a feature request. Does Dropbox maintain a list of user-submitted feature requests, where we can upvote a feature request if it is important to us?

 

  • The Dropbox API doesn't expose a way to list or count the changes in a specific date range, but I'm filing this as a feature request internally. As with the other thread though, I can't promise if or when this might be implemented. This forum thread serves as your request. (You don't need to upvote it elsewhere.) Thanks!

  • Greg-DB's avatar
    Greg-DB
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

    The Dropbox API doesn't expose a way to list or count the changes in a specific date range, but I'm filing this as a feature request internally. As with the other thread though, I can't promise if or when this might be implemented. This forum thread serves as your request. (You don't need to upvote it elsewhere.) Thanks!