Question

I am trying to upload files to dropbox in app I am making that is hosted on google app engine. Since I am using google app engine, I need to use the REST api from dropbox. For making the requests I am using this library. Now I have already started hitting problems at square one. I have no idea what parameters, and I can not find for the life of me anywhere in the documentation (even though the api docs say that there are no needed parameters) anything about how to make the oauth request.

conn = Connection('http://api.dropbox.com/1/oauth/request_token', username='myusername', password='mypassword')
conn.request_post('')

this is the code that I managed to get a 401 Error with (even though I know that it does not look right).

Anyways, please help! for the record I am going to make a put request later (if that at all helps)

Answer 1

Dropbox’s documentation can be a little misleading when it says “There are no Dropbox-specific parameters for this method.”. What they are saying is that aside from the parameters required by Oauth they don’t require anything else. I would prefer if they actually outlined an example of what parameters are required in their own docs (for example flickr has fairly detailed docs under “Signing Requests”).

Dropbox points you to the Oauth spec itself, though it is somewhat difficult to parse. Basically the request will need these parameters:

• oauth_consumer_key:
  The Consumer Key.
• oauth_signature_method:
  The signature method the Consumer used to sign the request.
• oauth_signature:
  The signature as defined in Signing Requests.
• oauth_timestamp:
  As defined in Nonce and Timestamp.
• oauth_nonce:
  As defined in Nonce and Timestamp.

Source:
http://oauth.net/core/1.0/#rfc.section.6.1.1