Build Your Own Dropbox Client with the Dropbox API

Dropbox: Build a custom Dropbox client with PHP and Laravel

Dropbox stands out among a wide range of file hosting solutions with its simplicity, automatic synchronization capabilities, cross-platform support, and other powerful features.

As a PHP developer, you can make the most of the Dropbox API to create applications to implement various operations of your Dropbox account. This tutorial will use Dropbox API v2. If you want to do it, you can clone the project from Github.

Core points

• Use Dropbox API v2 to build a custom Dropbox client in combination with PHP and Laravel to control user file operations.
• First register a new application on the Dropbox developer website and get the necessary credentials such as App Key and Secret, which are crucial for API authentication.
• Configure the Laravel environment to integrate Dropbox by setting the necessary routing and middleware to handle user authentication and file operations.
• Install and use Guzzle, Purl and Carbon libraries in Laravel to handle HTTP requests, URL operations, and date/time conversions respectively.
• Enable various functions such as file upload, download, search and version management through specific API endpoints, and use token-based access.
• Protect your application by setting the appropriate permissions (folder access or full Dropbox access) and using OAuth2 for user authentication and authorization.
• Explore advanced features such as webhooks for real-time file update notifications, as well as embedded tools such as Chooser and Saver for enhanced user interaction.

Create Dropbox app

First, visit the Dropbox developer website and create a new application.

Dropbox offers two APIs: the public-facing Dropbox API and the team-facing Business API. The two APIs are nearly identical, the only difference is that the Business API is specifically for enterprise accounts, so it includes team features by default such as access to team information, team member file access, and team member management. We will use the former.

After creating the application, you will see the application settings page:

Here, you can set the following:

• Development Users – This allows you to add Dropbox users to test your application. By default, the application status is "Development". This means that only you can test its functionality. If you allow any other user to access your app, they will not be able to use it.
• Permission Type – This is the setting you selected when creating the application. There are only two permission types: folder and full Dropbox. Folders means that your application can only access the folders you specify. Full Dropbox means that your app can access all users’ files.
• App Key and Secret – This is the only key that Dropbox uses to identify your application. We will need it later.
• OAuth2 Redirect URLs – Here you can set URLs, and your application can redirect to these URLs after the user authorizes the necessary permissions. Now leave blank first, you will add the value later. Now note that only the URL you specified here can be used for redirects.
• Allow implicit authorization – Whether to automatically generate an access token after the user grants the necessary permissions to your application. If you are using Dropbox on the client, you should set it to "Allow" so that you can get access tokens via JavaScript. For this project, you should set it to "Don't allow".
• Generated Access Token – You can use this token to generate an access token for your account. Access tokens can be used to make requests to the API.
• Chooser/Saver Domain Name – If you use embedded tools such as Chooser and Saver, you need to specify the domain name to embed these tools here.
• Webhooks – If you want the server to perform specific actions when a file in the user's Dropbox account changes, you can use Webhooks. In this tutorial, we will not cover Webhooks, so if you need this feature in your application, it is recommended that you check out the Webhooks documentation.

Build the application

Now you can start building the application. We will use Laravel.

Installing dependencies

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel pinch

After the installation is complete, you also need to install Guzzle, Purl, and Carbon.

composer require nesbot/carbon jwage/purl guzzlehttp/guzzle

We will use Guzzle to issue HTTP requests to the Dropbox API, build the Dropbox login URL with Purl, and use Carbon to represent the file date in the user time zone.

Configuration

After installing Laravel, open the .env file in the project root directory and add the Dropbox configuration:

<code>DROPBOX_APP_KEY="YOUR DROPBOX APP KEY"
DROPBOX_APP_SECRET="YOUR DROPBOX APP SECRET"
DROPBOX_REDIRECT_URI="YOUR DROPBOX LOGIN REDIRECT URL"</code>

Use the App Key and App Secret you previously obtained from the Dropbox developer website as the values ​​of DROPBOX_APP_KEY and DROPBOX_APP_SECRET. For DROPBOX_REDIRECT_URI, you have to specify an http URL, so if you are using a virtual host you need to use a tool like Ngrok to provide the service. Then, in your virtual host configuration, add the URL provided by Ngrok as ServerAlias.

<virtualhost *:80>
    ServerName pinch.dev
    ServerAlias xxxxxxx.ngrok.io
    ServerAdmin wern@localhost
    DocumentRoot /home/wern/www/pinch/public
</virtualhost>

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