Dropbox Woos Developers With New API Release

Romin Irani, November 3rd, 2011

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File Storage APIs have gone mainstream in the last year and developers are in a race to integrate the popular file storage options that are available to users on the internet. Dropbox has been one of the key players and, with the release of the Dropbox API aims to push the envelope by releasing not just support for newer features like sharing and search but also with the release of developer SDKs to maximize its reach across developers.

The new release, named API version 1 is packed with features to go along with a completely revamped developer site. Dropbox clearly plans to court not just mobile developers but also web application developers. The new version in addition to Android and iOS support, also has developers SDKs for Python, Ruby and Java. The Open Source community has also made available Dropbox API ports to C# and PHP.

Some of the key features in Version 1 of the Dropbox API include:

• OAuth v1 is now the official supported authentication mechanism. No need to ask for username and password in your application.
• File Revisions and Search: You can now search and share with your application. Powerful File Revision Management is also supported. For e.g. reverting to an older version of the file, undeleting files, etc.
• App Folders: You do not need to expose the entire folder hierarchy if your application only does read/write from single designated folder. That is exactly what the App Folder is and you can even move or rename this App Folder and Dropbox will manage that for you.

Developers are recommended to move to API Version 1 in due course of time. Dropbox has stated that they plan to phase out API Version 0, though no timeframe has been given for now.

For full details on the latest Dropbox API, visit the Developer Site.