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Forum Discussion
Listing files in a folder, and make download links for all files?
I have a private Dropbox.
I have a PHP-driven webpage where i want to list clickable links to some files in a specific folder in my dropbox.
It's simple to list the files on my web page, I just use "files/list_folder/" to get an array of the files in the wanted folder.
But how can I get URLs to download the files, so I can make my list of files clickable?
Hi James_T,
Just use sharing/create_shared_link_with_settings. 😉 Existing links could be enumerated with sharing/list_shared_links.
Hope this helps.
- macribas
Dropbox Staff
You need to loop that array and create links for each file.
Take a look at the /sharing/create_link_with_settings endpoint.
Alternatively, we provide an embedded component to display the contents of a folder directly in a web page:
https://dropbox.tech/developers/now-available--dropbox-embedder
Maybe that will make your life easier.
Won't looping through every file and folder and make a ton of share links be very slow?
The embedding solution seems more sensible, but if I understand correctly:
1. The root folder must have a share link created first
2. I have no control over which files and folders are displayed (I can't choose to hide a specific subfolder, or a specific file)
- Greg-DB
James_T Yes, /2/sharing/create_shared_link_with_settings requires one call per item, so if there's a significant number to process, that would take a significant amount of time. That being the case, you could also consider only creating the shared link on demand, when the user clicks on a specific file. That is, the listed on your file on your page would link to a route on your server, which when accessed, would make the Dropbox API call and then redirect the user to the returned link. (Likewise, /2/files/get_temporary_link would also work here, if you just need a temporary direct download link instead of a shared link.)
Alternatively, if you want to have the user's browser download the file directly, you could use /2/files/download on your server when the user clicks on a particular file. That would require passing the file data through your server each time though.
And yes, your understanding of the Embedder is correct. It would take a single shared link for the parent folder, and would then list everything in that linked parent folder.
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