I am looking for dropbox apis which will serve me to sync all/specific files into third party app. I have explored core API and Sync API but couldn't figure out right strategy to implement this scenario.
Use case details :
user grants dropbox permission/connects to my app.
User share set of existing files to app.
If there is any changes happened to the set of files shared with app, i should able to identify them without downloading the files again.
I have come across some applications(ex: zohodocs) which continuously sync files from dropbox to their application. Are they continuously check all files in the dropbox user account to find the changes. What is the effective way to doing this.
Also please suggest appropriate API's without violating user security by granting more than required permissions.
The answers depends on what kind of app you're building and where it runs.
For client-side apps (JavaScript in the browser, mobile apps, desktop apps), you should be using a combination of /longpoll_delta and /delta to find out when files change and then what the specific changes were.
For server-side apps where you're monitoring a lot of user accounts at the same time, you should be using webhooks to get a notification when files change in a user's Dropbox, and then /delta to get the specific changes.
In terms of permissions, the options are here: https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/devguide#app-permissions. Without knowing the specifics of the app, it's hard to tell you which permissions you'll need to use.
EDIT
I should add that, in the case of a client app, the Sync API automates the /longpoll_delta-/delta loop. You instead just add listeners/observers to get notified when files change.
We have the same use-case and poll dropbox every 15 minutes by calling the /delta service
https://www.dropbox.com/developers/core/docs#delta
This is very efficient. We are using our own library for this, https://github.com/rmuller/dropbox-java-client.
Related
I’m building a new web application which needs to work seamlessly even when there is no internet connection. I’ve selected Angular and am building a PWA as it comes with built-in functionality to make the application work offline. So far, I have the service worker working perfectly and driven by the manifest file, this very nicely caches the static content and I’ve set it to cache a bunch of API requests which I want to use whilst the application is offline.
In addition to this, I’ve used localStorage to store attempts to invoke put, post and delete API requests when the user is offline. Once the internet connection is re-established, the requests stored in localStorage are sent to the server.
This far in my proof of concept, the user can access content whilst offline, edit data and the data gets synced with the server once the user’s internet connection is re-established. This is where my quandary begins though. There is API request data cached automatically by the service worker as defined in the manifest file, and there is a separate store of data for data edits whilst offline. This leads to a situation where the user edits some data, saves the data, refreshes the page and the data is served by the service worker cached API.
Is there a built in mechanism to update API data cached automatically by the service worker? I don’t fancy trying to unpick this manually as it seems hacky and I can’t imagine it’ll be future proof as service workers evolve.
If there isn’t a standard way to achieve what I need to do, is it common for developers to take full control of offline data by storing it all in IndexedDB/localStorage manually? i.e. I could invoke API requests and write some code which caches the results in a structured format in IndexedDB to form an offline database, then writes back to the offline database whenever the user edits some data, and uploads any data edits when the user is back online. I don’t envisage any technical problems with doing this, it just seems like a lot of effort to achieve something which I was hoping to be standard functionality.
I’m fairly new to developing with Angular, but have many years of other development experience. So please forgive me if I’m asking obvious questions, I just can’t seem to find a good article on best practices for working with data storage with service workers.
Thanks
I have a project where my users can edit local data when they are offline and I use Cloud Firestore to have a local database cached available. If I understood you correctly, this would be exactly your requirement.
The benefit of this solution is that with just one line of code, you get not only a local db, but also all the changes made offline are automatically synchronised with the server once the client gets online again.
firebase.firestore().enablePersistence()
.catch(function(err) {
// log the error
});
// Subsequent queries will use persistence, if it was enabled successfully
If using this NoSQL database is an option for you I would go with it, otherwise you need to implement the local updates by yourself as there is not a built in solution for that.
Preface:
I'm hoping to upgrade an existing application by adding cloud backup and syncing of the customers data. We want this to be as seamless as possible, but also for the customers only interface to the data to be via the applications front-end interface.
Our application can be connected to the oil pipe of a machine, collects data on the oil condition. When a test has completed we want to push this to the cloud. Because of the distinct test nature of the data (as opposed to one big trend) most IoT platforms don't suit very well, so we're aiming to release a slightly modified version of the application which doesn't have the connection to the sensors and this will be our remote front-end.
Since the existing application uses a relatively simple file structure to store it's data, if we simply replicate these files in the cloud, the remote front-end version can just download these to the same location and it'll work fine. Thus this has lead us to Dropbox (or any recommended more appropriate cloud storage system).
We hope to use the Dropbox API directly in our application to push and pull the files as necessary. All of this so far we believe is perfectly achievable.
Question: Is it possible - and if so how would we go about - to setup a user system with the below requirements
The users personal dropbox is not used
Dropbox is completely hidden from the user
The application vendor has a top level user who has access to all data (for analytic, we do not want to store confidential or sensitive data).
When the user logs in they only have access to their folder and any attackers could not disrupt the overall structure. (We understand that if an attacker got the master account then all is lost, but that is an internal issue to keep it secure. As long as the user accounts are isolated this is okay.)
Alternative Question Is anyone aware of a storage system or IoT system which would better suite this use case? We will still require backups/loss prevention as part of the service.
Currently our active directory is synced up with the jive platform, however the avatar on jive does not sync across to active directory, but everything else does. I was wondering if it is possible to make them sync using the JIVE REST API? If there are any other details that are needed I can provide this
Yes, it is possible to set the user avatar via the API in Jive. Please check the API documentation for this method.
However, if there is an issue with the AD sync you should first attempt to solve this to avoid this additional implementation.
I have an application in the store that has a bunch of UITableViews, each has a bunch of items that when selected, load a UIWebView that loads a local HTML file. The reason I do this is so it allows for viewing when there is no internet access, however it makes it tedious to update.
How would I go about both keeping local files, and keeping web files, so that If I update one on the web it would let the user know there is an 'update' and it can download and overwrite the old file with the new. Is this possible? Like I would make myself a backend to edit my HTML, and have a connection to the app so whenever I clicked save the app would know to ask the user to update the files so I don't have to submit to apple for such small updates.
But I still need to allow offline viewing in case they didn't have internet access.
What technologies or techniques would I have to research to accomplish this?
Thanks
what you're looking for is an html5 concept called application cache.. it directly addresses your problem. With app cache you can cache static content at the client side, which they can view even if they're offline, yet they can update it when the content on the server changes. If you look around you'll see people use this for the iPhone as well.
update:
What way would I go about rewriting files on the phone from ones on a server?
you basically update the cache to do that. from the docs:
The application cache automatically updates only if the manifest file
changes. It does not automatically update if resources listed in the
manifest file change. The manifest file is considered unchanged if it
is byte-for-byte the same; therefore, changing the modification date
of a manifest file also does not trigger an update. If this is not
sufficient for your application, you can update the application cache
explicitly using JavaScript.
I encourage you to do some reading on html5 local storage just to get the concept of local cache and manifest files etc, then just follow through the instructions on the apple docs.. It's not that difficult.
You can cache the content as abbood said but that won't allow you to provide initial offline content.
Another approach would be to use NSURLProtocol, which allows you to swizzle a request. For example, if you have a request for "http://google.com", you would be able to either change the URL or load your own content (say from a local directory).
I've got a database on my server which is about 3mb big. I'd like to ship that with my iphone application.
The most important thing is that I'd like to promote changes to the database (insert, updates, deletes) to the iphone. What's the best way of doing that? I mean - what is necessary on
- the server
- the client (= iphone)
- between; how to transfer this data?
I'm pretty free in using technologies serverside; right now, I've got an sqlite-database on the server filled with the data I'd like to sync to the iphones.
How often do you need the database to be updated, and how urgent are the changes?
If the database updates are infrequent and non-urgent, I'd have the app check for a new version of the database on startup, and if it has changed, download the entire new file.
The app would always download a small metadata file from a known URL on startup. The metadata file contains an version identifier for the latest version and a location where that version of the database can be downloaded. If the version identifier has changed from the version the app already has, will download the new version. If the version identifier has not changed, or if it can't check, the app can keep using the version it has.
Pro tip: if you want to show a progress bar for the download, include the size of the database in the metadata file. Cell networks often have transparent proxies that strip out the Content-Length header from HTTP responses.
Try using web hooks.
The concept of a WebHook is simple. A
WebHook is an HTTP callback: an HTTP
POST that occurs when something
happens; a simple event-notification
via HTTP POST.
A web application implementing
WebHooks will POST a message to a URL
when certain things happen. When a web
application enables users to register
their own URLs, the users can then
extend, customize, and integrate that
application with their own custom
extensions or even with other
applications around the web. For the
user, WebHooks are a way to receive
valuable information when it happens,
rather than continually polling for
that data and receiving nothing
valuable most of the time. WebHooks
have enormous potential and are
limited only by your imagination! (No,
it can't wash the dishes. Yet.)
You can find out more on Webhooks here:
http://www.webhooks.org/ and http://webhooks.pbworks.com/
Wonder if you have considered using a Sync Framework to manage the synchronization. If that interests you can take a look at the open source project, OpenMobster's Sync service. You can do the following sync operations
two-way
one-way client
one-way device
bootup
Besides that, all modifications are automatically tracked and synced with the Cloud. You can have your app offline when network connection is down. It will track any changes and automatically in the background synchronize it with the cloud when the connection returns. It also provides synchronization like iCloud across multiple devices
Also, modifications in the Cloud are synched using Push notifications, so the data is always current even if it is stored locally.
Here is a link to the open source project: http://openmobster.googlecode.com
Here is a link to iPhone App Sync: http://code.google.com/p/openmobster/wiki/iPhoneSyncApp