Overview

Download files stored in a shared Dropbox folder

Obtaining the code

Clone this repository to your local machine using git clone https://github.com/CSU-CIRA/dropbox_utils.git.git

Creating a Dropbox API Access Token

OAuth Guide

Run instructions

Environment set up

This tool is intended to run in an environment described by the Dockerfile in this repository: a basic python environment with the dropbox module installed with conda or pip

Building the image

To use Docker, build the image using the command docker build -t dropbox:1.0 . Although the tag (-t) is optional, it will assign a name and version to the resulting image which will make it easily locatable and also provide a mechanism to have multiple versions available for testing and using upgrades. Note the . assumes you are working in the directory that contains the Dockerfile. To provide an alternate path, trade the period out for -f /path/to/the/Dockerfile

Creating a container from the image

Although the default Docker behavior will create a container that runs as root, it is best practice to declare your own user when you create the container to avoid messy security issues. For compatability with the host machine, you can use your user and preferred group ids in the container, or if compatability is not an issue, you may simply create a new user:group identification for the container. To get your user and group id on the host (provided that you are working in a linux-like environment), use id.

To create and run a container from the image, use docker run -it --name dropbox_devel -u uid:gid -v /path/to/data/on/host:/path/to/data/in/the/container dropbox:1.0, adding -v flags before the image name as necessary to provide any data mounts needed for the code to be able to access the necessary output data and access token file. Again, the --name is optional but makes the container easily locatable.

Entering the container

The -it flag in the docker build command will start an interactive session within the container, where you will be dropped in the /dropbox_apps directory where the conversion scripts are located. If the container is stopped (you can check by running docker ps), start it by running docker start dropbox_devel and then enter it using docker exec -it dropbox_devel /bin/bash.

Running the Python scripts

dropbox_pull.py

• Get help:

python dropbox_pull.py -h

• Pull all files from shared Dropbox folder:

python dropbox_pull.py 
    -d Dropbox URL 
    -o /path/to/put/files/locally
    -t /path/to/text/file/with/dropbox/token 
    -v Include if you want messages printed to stdout