Data Sync with DropBox API and iOS

Question

I have an iOS application that stores data in a local directory. I would like to be able to synchronize this data between several devices using my application. This currently uses basic data, but I expect that you will have to upgrade to some text-based file storage system to make synchronization easier.

I was expecting the DropBox API to make it nice and easy, and that I can tell the API to just sync the contents of my data folder on startup / save. However, the DropBox API seems to be nothing more than an illustrious way to upload and download files.

Am I really mistaken in this assumption? Can the DropBox API actually simplify synchronizing a folder with text files? If not, is there any other service or even advice you can give? Syncing is tricky - I was hoping DropBox would simplify it.

Answer 1

Using / metadata , getting information about the contents of a folder would not be easy. All you have to do is check the modified date, and if it differs from your locally, follow the appropriate steps. It will also provide you with metadata for any contents of the file so you can choose which files to upload / download / add / delete as needed.

More functionality than this will be very application dependent; You can decide when and how you want to deal with different files.

Dropbox API Documentation

Answer 2

It will not be repeated, since Andy answered your question, thought that you can also find this tutorial useful:

http://www.nanaimostudio.com/blog/2011/1/20/how-to-synchronize-your-app-data-using-dropbox-api.html

Answer 3

Check out the new DropBox Sync API .

Answer 4

As mentioned above, the DropBox Sync API is now available, which I think will do what you talked about (I have not tried it personally, since I integrated Dropbox support in my application using the earlier SDK before this happened), This will probably be enough if you just work with dropbox.

In my case, I started adding support for additional online storage applications (“clouds”) for my application, and I find it somewhat more difficult to figure out the differences between them in how they handle different concepts such as authentication, versions, naming and etc. For example, the Dropbox API refers to files by their path, while the Box API refers to files according to their file identifier (which has an associated path, but I believe that this remains unchanged if the file is moved). Then also all the conflict resolution problems (aka merging) that arise when several clients try to synchronize conflicting changes with the server.

Recently, I was considering launching an open source project to develop a library that can connect to all major services, and provide an abstraction layer that describes their differences and also handles the synchronization process for you. I already have the code (which I have not published publicly so far), but could use it to run the project.

Would this be helpful to you? Will you (or any others) participate in such efforts?

(pay attention to the mods: I understand that this may deviate slightly from the topic - sorry. If you can recommend a more suitable forum to discuss this, I would be glad to accept the conversation there).

Answer 5

There is an RSS feed that can be limited to one of the shared folders, but it is an event filter to keep it low.