Dropbox: Produce a direct download link [PHP preferred]

Question

I'm using the Dropbox REST API and I can successfully retrieve a share url for a file.

https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/api#shares

However, the share link takes the user to a preview page on dropbox.com, whereas I'm looking for a direct link that a user could directly download a file. eg. Right click, Save as...

Answer 1

It turns out that the default share url that is returned is a short url and the short url will always point to the Dropbox preview page.

Therefore, you need to get the REST API to return the full url by setting the short_url parameter to false. Once you have the full url, then add ?dl=1 at the end of url.

Eg: https://dl.dropbox.com/s/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/MyFile.pdf?dl=1

More info:

https://www.dropbox.com/help/201/en

Prompt user to save on download from Dropbox

PHP Example:

This example has borrowed/inspired-by code samples from these: http://www.phpriot.com/articles/download-with-curl-and-php

http://www.humaan.com.au/php-and-the-dropbox-api/

/* These variables need to be defined */
$app_key = 'xxxxxxxx';
$app_secret = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';
$user_oauth_access_token = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';
$user_oauth_access_token_secret = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';    

$ch = curl_init(); 

$headers = array( 'Authorization: OAuth oauth_version="1.0", oauth_signature_method="PLAINTEXT"' );

$params = array('short_url' => 'false', 'oauth_consumer_key' => $app_key, 'oauth_token' => $user_oauth_access_token, 'oauth_signature' => $app_secret.'&'.$user_oauth_access_token_secret);

curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers );
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $params);
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://api.dropbox.com/1/shares/'.$dir );

/*
* To handle Dropbox's requirement for https requests, follow this:
* http://artur.ejsmont.org/blog/content/how-to-properly-secure-remote-api-calls-from-php-application
*/
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_CAINFO,getcwd() . "\dropboxphp\cacert.pem");
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 2);
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, TRUE);

curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE );
$api_response = curl_exec($ch);

if(curl_exec($ch) === false) {
    echo 'Curl error: ' . curl_error($ch);
}

$json_response = json_decode($api_response, true);

/* Finally end with the download link */
$download_url = $json_response['url'].'?dl=1';
echo '<a href="'.$download_url.'">Download me</a>';