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Forum Discussion
Dropbox custom URL scheme
I am developing an expo app. It needs to redirect back to the app after users have given authentication. When I was using expo go for basic testing this seemed to work fine but now that I am testing ...
Hi squidlauncher64,
You're providing too few info for what actually you're going to do. Why at all you need special scheme for your application? In general Dropbox API supports only HTTPS scheme as redirect URI and HTTP if the host is 'localhost' only. On mobile devices are supported also 'db-<APP KEY>' schemes. As far as I know no other custom schemes are possible! Anyway, for web applications usually the classical web protocol is enough. 🤔 Or not?
Thank you for replying! This is for an application for mobile devices. I would prefer to be directly routed back to the phone app to handle the access tokens. I guess I could reroute to a website domain I just think it would be cleaner this way. Dropbox did successfully reroute me to the 'expo go' app after authentication and I know that redirect URI was something along the lines of exp://127.0.0.1:19000. The problem is returning back to the app in development and production builds once authentication has completed.
squidlauncher64 wrote:... This is for an application for mobile devices. I would prefer to be directly routed back to the phone app to handle the access tokens. ...
Yes, you can do it. That's exactly what 'db-<APP KEY>' scheme is for (where <APP KEY> is your application's key). Your application should be ready to handle redirect URI like 'db-<APP KEY>://1/connect'. And URL to start from is a bit different (https://www.dropbox.com/1/connect).
Good luck.
Thank you for your response. I have attempted using 'db-<APP KEY>' with my actual app key and I am still not redirected to the mobile app. The allow button is greyed out. Do you have any other ideas?
- Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
squidlauncher64 It is possible to use a custom URI scheme with the Dropbox OAuth app authorization flow, using the code flow with PKCE. For example, I just tried this out with an authorization URL like this:
https://www.dropbox.com/oauth2/authorize?client_id=APPKEYHERE&response_type=code&redirect_uri=customscheme://redirect&code_challenge=CODECHALLENGEVALUEHERE&code_challenge_method=plainDropbox did then return the redirect to the "customscheme://redirect" redirect URI, as you can see in this screenshot:
I don't actually have an installed app registered for the "customscheme://" scheme though, so my browser accordingly reported the NS_ERROR_UNKNOWN_PROTOCOL error for that network request, and the "Allow" button is left disabled.
It sounds like that's what's happening in your case; Dropbox is attempting to perform the redirect requested, but your system was unable to process that URL scheme for whatever reason.
Exactly how you register your custom URL scheme will depend on your platform, but that's outside the scope of Dropbox API support so I can't offer insight on that. You may need to refer to the documentation or support resources for your platform for information on how to set that up.
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