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Forum Discussion
philip-lf
7 years agoExplorer | Level 4
Dropbox API to download All Content
Hi there, I am trying to fetch all content within a certain directory and display its content. The way it's set up now, it can fetch all files, but not directories within this directory.
dbx
....
- 7 years ago
The only way to download an entire folder at once like that is via filesDownloadZip.
Greg-DB
7 years agoDropbox Staff
There isn't a single method to retrieve everything. The interface is paginated in order to support folders with many items. (Otherwise, calls would start breaking when there are very large lists to return.)
So, in order to retrieve everything, you need to use both filesListFolder and filesListFolderContinue as documented:
https://dropbox.github.io/dropbox-sdk-js/Dropbox.html#filesListFolder__anchor
https://dropbox.github.io/dropbox-sdk-js/Dropbox.html#filesListFolderContinue__anchor
Also, if you want nested entries, you can set recursive=true when calling filesListFolder:
https://dropbox.github.io/dropbox-sdk-js/global.html#FilesListFolderArg
So, in order to retrieve everything, you need to use both filesListFolder and filesListFolderContinue as documented:
https://dropbox.github.io/dropbox-sdk-js/Dropbox.html#filesListFolder__anchor
https://dropbox.github.io/dropbox-sdk-js/Dropbox.html#filesListFolderContinue__anchor
Also, if you want nested entries, you can set recursive=true when calling filesListFolder:
https://dropbox.github.io/dropbox-sdk-js/global.html#FilesListFolderArg
- philip-lf7 years agoExplorer | Level 4
Thanks for the response Greg. As I'm trying it out, I can't seem to get the response I want. Am I not calling the API correctly?
dbx .filesListFolder({path: '/App', recursive: true}) .then(response => { console.log(response.entries); // works dbx .filesListFolderContinue({cursor: response.cursor}) .then(resp => { console.log(resp.entries); // empty array }); }) .catch(error => console.error(error));
- Greg-DB7 years agoDropbox StaffYou should always check the 'has_more' value for each result (from both filesListFolder and filesListFolderContinue) and call back again to filesListFolderContinue if it's true. There's more information about this in the documentation:
https://dropbox.github.io/dropbox-sdk-js/Dropbox.html#filesListFolder__anchor
In this version of your code, you're always calling back to filesListFolderContinue once. Since you're not checking 'has_more', that call may be unnecessary (if has_more for filesListFolder is false), or insufficient (if has_more for filesListFolderContinue is true).
Please update your code accordingly and let me know if there are entries that aren't getting returned at all.- philip-lf7 years agoExplorer | Level 4
With 'recursive' set to true, I get all the files and 'has_more' is equal to false. So I guess I don't need filesListFolderContinue. Although I'm getting all the files I'm only getting the metadata, I'm still trying to get the fileBlob to be able to retrieve the content within the file. With my original code, I was able to get fileBlob for each file, but it excluded each directory. Is there a way to get the fileBlob for both files and directories?
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