Dropbox Webhooks

https://www.dropbox.com/developers/blog/90/announcing-dropbox-webhooks

by smarx • 12 years ago

210 119 12 years ago

dropbox.com

daniel_levine2• 12 years ago

If anyone has questions, feedback or comments about webhooks or the Dropbox API more broadly, feel free to post here

You can also ping me at levine at dropbox

vladgur• 12 years ago

Whats the best/recommended way to test webhooks with a server running locally? Do you require webhook urls to be SSLd?

P.S. Also eagerly waiting for your Shared Folder API [1] :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484409

smarx5• 12 years ago

Webhooks don't require SSL. We're going to publish a little Python script soon that can generate fake webhook notifications for local testing, but in the meantime, I'd suggest just using curl. Something like this:

curl http://127.0.0.1/whatever -d '{"deltas": {"users:" [12345]}}'

Another possibility is to use a tool like ngrok or localtunnel, which is what some of our beta testers did.

johns• 12 years ago

http://john-sheehan.com/blog/a-survey-of-the-localhost-proxy...

jpallen• 12 years ago

This is great, thanks! Quick question: Is there a best practice for handling rate limiting? I.e. if you send us X number of web hook updates in quick succession for a user, are we ok just sending X delta requests back at you in quick succession? Or do we need to worry about rate limiting? What's the maximum rate we can expect to be sent web hook requests for one user?

smarx5• 12 years ago

Take a look at https://www.dropbox.com/developers/webhooks/tutorial#best-pr..., specifically the part about managing concurrency.

There are rate limits (per user) on the Dropbox side, but they're pretty high. I think the bigger concurrency issue is going to be on your end (making sure you don't process the same changes multiple times). Taking a lease per-user is a good start, and we're going to publish a more advanced sample in the coming weeks that uses a queue to really eliminate duplicate calls.

exarch3• 12 years ago

I have a question:

How do you feel about working for a company that employs a war criminal on their board of directors, and that lied to the public about its collusion with the NSA over PRISM and other warrantless surveillance programs?

davedx2• 12 years ago

Feedback: I moved my file syncing from Dropbox to Spideroak after you announced Rice was coming on board, and recommend all my friends, family and coworkers do the same. It's a shame because I love the product.

badsock• 12 years ago

Same here, except I went with BTSync. Really glad I did - it's a nice little product.

taejo• 12 years ago

I have a question: why does Dropbox hire board members better known for their support for torture than their business acumen?

eric_cc• 12 years ago

After reading the comments here and learning that you have hired Condoleezza Rice you have lost yourself another paying customer.

deciplex3• 12 years ago

What features have you added to your API to allow various intelligence agencies to more easily snoop on your customer data?

ollysb2• 12 years ago

Wow, they've been building up to this one for I think years. Very happy to see it. Having a real-time* filesystem available is going to great for not only the big projects like web hosting but I can imagine a ton of little in house tools that could make use of this.

* We know which type of real-time we're talking about...

daniel_levine2• 12 years ago

It has been a long time coming and we're really excited to see what folks do with it!

masterkain• 12 years ago

At AudioBox (https://audiobox.fm) we have a strong use case for it. We are already providing our users a "live filesystem" with Box, exciting that Dropbox is also adding this.

We'll have a look at this after our next release.

tannerc• 12 years ago

The Dropbox team has been working hard on Webhooks for some time now, it looks like this is a much-needed tool for developers.

For example, a little under a year ago I released a mobile writing app that synced using the Dropbox Sync API. Right out of the gate there were problems syncing large documents, specifically due to slow mobile connections. The webhooks functionality (while I haven't launched a version of the app that implements this) allows me to check for changes quickly on a server before syncing files on the user's device.

Kudos to the team on adding a much-needed feature to the Dropbox functionality.

leorocky3• 12 years ago

Stuff like this is why I like Dropbox even though it's more expensive. File syncing is their bread and butter. It's their main business, not a sideshow. They're always going to do this better than anyone else.

CSDude• 12 years ago

Can you give another example than this? Don't get me wrong, I'm trying to justify the huge price difference.

wasd• 12 years ago

LAN sync is only available on Dropbox and is incredibly useful.

leorocky3• 12 years ago

Things that come to mind immediately:

Dropbox works equally well across platforms with near 0 synchronization issues. It's just a folder. They aren't trying to add cloud to their own platform, they don't care what device you use or if you use Apple's word processor or Microsoft or Google Docs.

Dropbox has has a firebase/Parse style API you can use to build applications that store that application data in the cloud.

My favorite Dropbox API uses:

automatic syncing of O'reilly Media books. Whenever O'reilly updates one of their ebooks, I always have the current copy, because O'reilly syncs it with Dropbox.

1Password synching.

automatic Hackpad backups (they had that even before they were bought).

I installed this new app the other day, Trickster from the Mac App store, it automatically detected I was using Dropbox.

But I'll mention some negatives:

Those new recent android apps were really bad and I uninstalled them. Carousel and that other one, I don't even remember what it was now. They were just terrible apps, at least on my Galaxy S4.

potato• 12 years ago

The Packrat feature is also nice.

https://www.dropbox.com/help/113/en

FigBug• 12 years ago

For me it's 'stays connected' For some reason Google Drive will disconnect periodically and there is no reconnect option. You have to exit and restart, and then it needs to re-index everything.

Multiple Dropboxs. New feature, but I can run my work and home dropbox at the same time and they sync to different folders.

Sharing is cleaner. When I invite a Dropbox user to a share, the share appears in their drive. With Google drive, they get access to the share web only but it doesn't sync to their drive. The UI to get it to sync to drive isn't clear, so I end up doing a lot of 'support'

I also find the Google Drive .gdoc files bizarre. They aren't actual files, users don't understand you can't copy them out of the drive to back them up, etc.

jl6• 12 years ago

If you pay for the business account, you get unlimited space. If you actually do use multiple terabytes, then the per-GB cost is pretty good.

exarch3• 12 years ago

Shame on you for supporting a company that does not respect your privacy, lies to you, and puts a torturing, Constitution-destroying war criminal on their board of directors.

xxpor• 12 years ago

Guess what: 99% of people don't give a flying fuck.

pbreit2• 12 years ago

Easy downvote. I don't think any of your (inflammatory) assertions are supportable.

Karunamon3• 12 years ago

Someone correct my if I'm wrong here, but if you're referring to PRISM, that's not lying. Note that Dropbox as well as any other US company is subject to (distasteful, but otherwise legal) demands for information.

PRISM is basically a secure upload endpoint, not some automated, unaccountable, secret data siphoning tool. (Though they have those as well..)

If I were a popular enough internet company to get frequent NSL requests, it would only make sense to sign up. I have to provide the data, might as well make it as painless as possible.

Xdes• 12 years ago

I'm guessing the boycott is over?

msoad2• 12 years ago

Not for me. I've moved to Google Drive. Cheaper, faster, better and less pro-war!

sidcool• 12 years ago

Interestingly your name anagrams with mosad.

vdaniuk6• 12 years ago

Not for me. All I care about this announcement is the hooks that Mamdouh Habib was hanged on while he was tortured in Egypt, sent there by the CIA.

And one of the Dropbox board members was an ardent supporter of this and other despicable practices(also known as torture).

If Daniel Levine is fine with this, then I am definitely not fine with paying, using or promoting his product API.

edit: I switched to spideroak and am quite happy with the product.

gmacdon89• 12 years ago

I lolled.

galonk• 12 years ago

Nope, switched to BTSync. I'll investigate syncthing and whatever else comes along, but basically anything-but-Dropbox.

mkal_tsr• 12 years ago

Nope, permanently moved to SpiderOak

spacefight2• 12 years ago

Not for me, I cancelled my account and moved to a self-hosted Owncloud instance.

gatehouse• 12 years ago

I won't be sending any more of my personal data, taking Mailbox off my iPhone was sad though.

general_failure• 12 years ago

No way. I moved permanently to unison.

cryoshon• 12 years ago

Nope, moved to Google Drive.

scrrr• 12 years ago

Nope. I won't be back. Using unison now. Syncthing looks nice, too.

corford2• 12 years ago

I gave up on them years ago and switched to spideroak. Haven't looked back since.

exarch3• 12 years ago

Nope. I'm using ownCloud now on a VPS. Dropbox worked hard to lose my business, and I hate to see hard work go to waste.

davedx2• 12 years ago

Another Spideroak migration here. Haven't looked back.

Joeboy• 12 years ago

Owncloud (but without enthusiasm).

diasp• 12 years ago

https://owner.io/ Hosted in a german data center under the strictest security standards.

AndrewGreen• 12 years ago

Nope. Actually turned out not to be such a bad thing as it forced me to rethink an implementation approach (using Dropbox APIs) that had seemed like a good idea, and was getting really sticky.

amastilovic• 12 years ago

To me, Dropbox is "over". Moved to ownCloud, never looked back.

cddotdotslash• 12 years ago

Not just a boycott, but I simply have no reason to use Dropbox. It's more expensive, does nothing Google Drive can't do, and on top of that, has all the political issues.

thrush• 12 years ago

Is there a file storage protocol?

On the same note, it would be cool to have this protocol to drive the development of Dropbox (and other file storage services for that matter) in the same way that Git drives what is capable on Github.

rsync• 12 years ago

Agreed. I am trying to see if this framework allows for a simple polling and synchronization of a particular dropbox to a unix system. That is, a simple way to clone my dropbox to any old unix system that is running their python code, and keeps it updated via the polling mechanism.

This is interesting because we (rsync.net) would then "freeze" that python app[1] (whatever it ends up being) and let users clone and sync a dropbox to their rsync.net account.

We already do this with s3cmd and git, and dropbox would be a nice addition.

[1] We don't allow interpreters (python, perl, shell) in our environment, so we have to "freeze" python to a binary exe.

smarx5• 12 years ago

If you're polling client-side for a single account, you should just be using longpoll_delta[1] and delta[2]. But maybe I misunderstood the use case?

[1] https://www.dropbox.com/developers/core/docs#longpoll-delta

[2] https://www.dropbox.com/developers/core/docs#delta

adamnemecek• 12 years ago

Can I use this new API to be notified when Dropbox board members resign?

vdaniuk6• 12 years ago

You can use this API to get a boilerplate non-response full of hypocritical "commitment" about user privacy.

nextstep• 12 years ago

I refuse to use Dropbox after Condoleezza Rice was appointed to their board.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/protests-continue-a...

I hope these protests hurt Dropbox's image and business and they replace Rice with someone who isn't a war criminal.

nathannecro2• 12 years ago

How exactly is Rice a war criminal?

sampk• 12 years ago

http://www.drop-dropbox.com/

camus2• 12 years ago

Thanks to Obama she will never be judged for the alleged crimes her and her pals commited.

But the reputation of USA as the leader of the free world is safe,we can now give the russians moral lessons.

dabernathy892• 12 years ago

She's not, of course. The people who claim she is tend to be pushing a fantasy concept of international law.

us0r3• 12 years ago

Yea all that talk and she is still there. Clearly it didn't have any kind of impact. Either people didn't follow through or they were free accounts which they probably don't mind losing anyways.

Karunamon3• 12 years ago

What boggles my mind is that there are many people who would pillory the guy who got canned at Mozilla because he gave $1000 to people to fear-monger about LGBTs, who gets multiple few-hundred-comment threads, but we talk about someone who could charitably be described as a war criminal, and also add ardent supporter of NSA surveillance and such, (i.e. things a lot more harmful and important than marriage equality) and the outrage is so lukewarm as to be non-existent.

I really don't get the culture here sometimes. Eich gets hung out to dry (which is something I still agree with, for the record) but Rice more or less gets a free pass, despite Rice having been responsible/complicit in a hell of a lot more evil in the world?

josephagoss2• 12 years ago

We cancelled my premium account and my girlfriends premium account after we decided we could not support Dropbox's new direction.

Rice does not inspire confidence with a company handling private data.

krbbltr3• 12 years ago

I'm doubtful about paid accounts having a significant impact on their bottom line. Do they publish numbers on that?

rjohnk2• 12 years ago

Dropbox could end world hunger and bring peace to the world and we'd still have people who wouldn't accept it. This is about an addition to their API. We don't care if you think she's the spawn of Satan.

deciplex3• 12 years ago

It needs to be brought up in every Dropbox thread, and voted to the top comment. There is literally no valid use case for Dropbox, everyone using it needs to give it up for something else, and anyone who hasn't been made aware of that needs to be.

Even if they end world hunger.

vdaniuk6• 12 years ago

Hypocritical much? Why do you speak for the whole HN? The community clearly does care as evidenced by a number of comments about Rice in this thread.

newsreader• 12 years ago

I use DropBox and so does a lot of other people I know. Their decision to hire Condoleezza Rice does not affect my decision and obviously has no impact on the decision of many others.

mariocesar• 12 years ago

What I'm feeling about this? This is a great feature, but I don't trust the brand.

I'm really anxious about Canonical releasing the Ubuntu One Server project as open source https://launchpad.net/ubuntuone-servers, soon as it happens I will dedicate to make it mainstream. Can you imagine the possibilities? decentralized synchronization, multiple storages protocols like S3 or FTP.

File synchronization is a hard thing to do, but I don't see common sense on making it centralized. Really have high hopes when Ubuntu One is released.

icebraining5• 12 years ago

Can you imagine the possibilities? decentralized synchronization, multiple storages protocols like S3 or FTP.

At the risk of sounding like a shill, that's already possible with git-annex. It's decentralized, and it supports remote storage on S3, FTP, rsync, Webdav (e.g. Box.com), Tahoe-LAFS, Google Drive, Mega, SkyDrive and more.

I personally have a node on my laptop, one on my VPS, one on my RaspPi, one on my Nexus 7 and a bucket on S3, all happily syncing.

voltagex_• 12 years ago

git-annex is quite difficult to use, even more so if one of your nodes is a Windows box.

nodata2• 12 years ago

The sheer number of symlinks put me off git-annex.

kingnight• 12 years ago

Interesting the company they feature, Picturelife, seems to be a direct competitor to their own new Carousel app.

us0r3• 12 years ago

Speaking of the devil... as of a few hours ago she is still defending the NSA programs.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_25762917/condoleezza-...

Navarajan• 12 years ago

I hope http://www.site44.com/ is also implemented the Dropbox Webhook.

smarx5• 12 years ago

Of course. :-)

sireat• 12 years ago

Webhooks or no, Dropbox has already nailed down the core features but the Rice situation is gnawing at me.

I would love to see a canonical list of alternatives to Dropbox, I still have 30GB in free layers(thanks University promotions), but the more I think about it, the less I want to keep using Dropbox.

So some options are to set up your ownCloud at VPS, use Google Drive, or Microsoft Skydrive or something else.

Problem with latter two is that those are not exactly highly ethical choices either.

On the other hand ownCloud fails the grandma test something that Dropbox has been excellent at.

What other options are there?

Dropbox Webhooks

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