A DropboxStorage as X-mas present

rjahn — Wed, 24 Dec 2014 13:16:59 +0000

Merry X-mas

We have a little present for you. It's a connector for Dropbox.

The source code is available here.

It's a full IStorage implementation and allows CRUD operations to your Dropbox account. We use it for sharing dynamicly created reports and as document archive. It's very useful because your application doesn't need a mobile client to exchange data with the backend.

If your secretary creates the management report (Word, Excel or Pdf), simply modify or read it via Dropbox. It's really simple because Word and Excel are available for mobile devices. Both tools have a built-in Dropbox support and thus makes it easy to access files.

How to use the storage?

Currently, we don't have a pre-compiled lib, but simply clone the repository and use the ANT build to create your own lib.

It's simple to integrate the storage in your application:

public DropboxStorage getFiles()throwsException
{

    DropboxStorage storage =(DropboxStorage)get("files");
    if (storage == null)

    {

        storage = new DropboxStorage();

        storage.setAccessToken(SessionContext.getCurrentSessionConfig().

                                   getProperty("/application/dropbox/accessToken"));

        storage.setFileType(FileType.All);

        //use "flat" style

        storage.setRecursive(true);

        storage.open();
        put("files", storage);

    }
    return storage;

}

Before the storage will work, prepare your dropbox account to get an access token. It's not tricky and everything is documented.

There are some examples available as JUnit tests.

A simple Dropbox screen could look like this one:

Dropbox access with JVx

Blog @ SIB Visions » Dropbox

A DropboxStorage as X-mas present