Set up Dropbox storage backend

Acquiring authentication tokens

  1. Create a new Dropbox App in the App Console
  2. Open your new Dropbox App and set DROPBOX_APP_KEY and DROPBOX_APP_SECRET in your environment (e.g. docker-compose.yml) accordingly
  3. Click on Permissions in your app and make sure, that the following permissions are cranted (or more):
    • files.metadata.write
    • files.metadata.read
    • files.content.write
    • files.content.read
  4. Replace APPKEY in https://www.dropbox.com/oauth2/authorize?client_id=APPKEY&token_access_type=offline&response_type=code with the app key from step 2
  5. Visit the URL and confirm the access of your app. This gives you an auth code -> save it somewhere!
  6. Replace AUTHCODE, APPKEY, APPSECRET accordingly and perform the request: 
    curl https://api.dropbox.com/oauth2/token \
 -d code=AUTHCODE \
 -d grant_type=authorization_code \
 -d client_id=APPKEY \
 -d client_secret=APPSECRET
  7. Execute the request. You will get a JSON formatted reply. Use the value of the refresh_token for the last environment variable DROPBOX_REFRESH_TOKEN
  8. You should now have DROPBOX_APP_KEY, DROPBOX_APP_SECRET and DROPBOX_REFRESH_TOKEN set. These don’t expire.

Note: Using the “Generated access token” in the app console is not supported, as it is only very short lived and therefore not suitable for an automatic backup solution. The refresh token handles this automatically - the setup procedure above is only needed once.

Other parameters

Important: If you chose App folder access during the creation of your Dropbox app in step 1 above, DROPBOX_REMOTE_PATH will be a relative path under the App folder! (For example, DROPBOX_REMOTE_PATH=/somedir means the backup file will be uploaded to /Apps/myapp/somedir) On the other hand if you chose Full Dropbox access, the value for DROPBOX_REMOTE_PATH will represent an absolute path inside your Dropbox storage area. (Still considering the same example above, the backup file will be uploaded to /somedir in your Dropbox root)