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It's a shame their API seems to be taking an eternity. I gave up waiting about two months ago.


Don't wait. Do what I did and hack something together with a Linux CLI install of Dropbox on a server. I did that months ago and users love it, even though setup isn't as smooth as it would be if I had an API to work with.


That might be fine for fun, but I generally try to avoid spending a lot of time creating solutions that rely on hacks to work.


This hack has been received with more enthusiasm than many of my better-engineered features.


That's a great idea. Would you be willing to share more details on your hack?


I have a script that receives email from dropbox re shared folders and pulls the email address and folder name. This info gets put in a table. A cron job looks in this table and notices when the folder appears. It sends an email to the user who has to do a final confirmation step to protect against fake emails. Once that's done the cron job checks every minute for new files, processes them as it would files uploaded through the web, then deletes them.

Hackish parts: 1. The email format could change. 2. If the folder name isn't unique the email contains the non-unique name. Eg "ourdoings" in email, then when I accept, the folder is named "ourdoings (28)". I have to change the folder by hand. 3. They have to use the same email for dropbox and ourdoings signup. 4. Often people make subfolders of their "Photos" folder which doesn't fit the workflow.

There are changes I could make to help address these issues. It just hasn't been a high priority. The system works great once setup is done. I'm really glad I implemented it rather than just wait for an api. There's no more convenient way to upload photos.


Thanks Bruce.


I may share technical details in a few hours, but from a use perspective: http://ourdoings.com/2009-09-08


That looks amazing, what great way for your users to interact with your site. I'd be very interested in hearing those technical details as would plenty of others I'm sure.


What if I can't run the linux CLI?


If you have a single BSD server you're out of luck, but it might be worth it to get a small specialized server just for dropbox.




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