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Offline files not downloaded when accessed programmatically (macOS)
Not sure where best to address this question, but it would appear to be API-related... We've got an existing app which has been working OK until recently on both Windows and Mac platforms, which ...
Hello,
Would it work for you to right-click the Dropbox folder and pick the “Make available offline” option from the Dropbox context menu and from the Dropbox preferences to set new files to sync as offline?
That would allow you to keep the existing app architecture.
Hope this helps,
Andrew (DBoxTips)
Would it work for you to right-click the Dropbox folder and pick the “Make available offline” option from the Dropbox context menu and from the Dropbox preferences to set new files to sync as offline?
That would allow you to keep the existing app architecture.
Hope this helps,
Andrew (DBoxTips)
We can do that in this case, but if possible we'd rather not force all Mac users to sync everything locally, so it would be better to automate it! Thanks, though.
Hi Jon B.1,
Your issue is just one symptom of a bigger problem related to Dropbox application. It's not something related to Dropbox API. Unfortunately, the application' developers are too lazy, as it seems, to prepare and publish documentation for the application exported features. 🤷 That's it.
One way you may try to workaround the issue is open desired files with a pre-built system dialog. They are usually components of corresponding system file manager (Finder, Windows File explorer, etc) and behave in the same way. So likely they will trigger sync of the corresponding file in Dropbox folder. Try at least.
Good luck.
We can do that in this case, but if possible we'd rather not force all Mac users to sync everything locally, so it would be better to automate it! Thanks, though.
Apologies, from your initial post I wrongly assumed this a dedicated setup for one machine, not a software shipped to multiple users. Normally, opening a handle to an online-only file in order to read from it should be enough to trigger the download by the Dropbox desktop client.
I would try to reproduce the issue using a simpler test program and then contact Dropbox support and ask about it.
Here is simple test C program that you can use to reproduce and isolate the issue on a smaller scale. You could try compiling and running it and then report the results here.
Hope this helps,
Andrew (DBoxTips)
I am an individual contributor to the Dropbox Community forums, not affiliated with Dropbox. All opinions expressed here are my own.
Hello Andrew!
Ran the test program on a 4K XML file, which exists and is readable on the website, but shows up as 0 bytes in Finder. It reported the error "File size is zero bytes. Nothing to be downloaded" -- so it doesn't get as far as attempting to read the file. When I comment out the return in that clause of the test program, it continues on and reports "Failure. File is still online-only". The file remains un-synced. In the other cases where we've tried it, double-clicking in Finder will sync it, but I haven't done that yet.
In other news, the user has upgraded to the FileProvider version of Dropbox client, and it hasn't fixed the problem.
- Thank you for reporting back your results.
To confirm (and to try reproducing this on my end): is this on Sonoma 14.6.1?
Thanks,
Andrew (DBoxTips)
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