Dropbox SDK for PHP 5.3+

A PHP library to access Dropbox’s HTTP-based API.

License: MIT

Requirements:

• PHP 5.3+, with 64-bit integers.
• PHP cURL extension with SSL enabled (it’s usually built-in).

SDK API docs.

Setup

If you’re using Composer for your project’s dependencies, add the following to your “composer.json”:

"require": {
  "dropbox/dropbox-sdk": "1.1.*"
}

If you’re not using Composer, download the code, copy the “lib/” folder into your project somewhere, and include the “lib/Dropbox/autoload.php” in your code. For example, if you copied the “lib/” and named it “dropbox-sdk/”, you would do:

// Do this only if you're not using a global autoloader (such as Composer's).
require_once "dropbox-sdk/Dropbox/autoload.php";

Get a Dropbox API key

You need a Dropbox API key to make API requests.

• Go to: https://dropbox.com/developers/apps
• If you’ve already registered an app, click on the “Options” link to see the app’s API key and secret.
• Otherwise, click “Create an app” to register an app. Choose “Full Dropbox” or “App Folder” depending on your needs.

Save the API key to a JSON file called, say, “test.app”:

{
  "key": "Your Dropbox API app key",
  "secret": "Your Dropbox API app secret"
}

Using the Dropbox API

Before your app can access a Dropbox user’s files, the user must authorize your application using OAuth 2. Successfully completing this authorization flow gives you an access token for the user’s Dropbox account, which grants you the ability to make Dropbox API calls to access their files.

• Authorization example for a simple web app: Web File Browser example
• Authorization example for a command-line tool: Command-Line Authorization example

Once you have an access token, create a Client and start making API calls.

You only need to perform the authorization process once per user. Once you have an access token for a user, save it somewhere persistent, like in a database. The next time that user visits your app, you can skip the authorization process and go straight to making API calls.

Running the Examples and Tests

1. Download this repository.
2. Save your Dropbox API key in a file called “test.app”. See: Get a Dropbox API key, above.

authorize.php

This example runs through the OAuth 2 authorization flow.

./examples/authorize.php test.app test.auth

This produces a file named “test.auth” that has the access token. This file can passed in to the other examples.

account-info.php

A trivial example that calls the /account/info API endpoint.

./examples/account-info.php test.auth

(You must first generate “test.auth” using the “authorize” example above.)

web-file-browser.php

A tiny web app that runs through the OAuth 2 authorization flow and then uses Dropbox API calls to let the user browse their Dropbox files. You need PHP 5.4+ to run it.

Prerequisite: In the Dropbox API app configuration console, you need to add “http://localhost:5000/dropbox-auth-finish” to the list of allowed redirect URIs.

cp test.app examples/web-file-browser.app
php -S localhost:5000 examples/web-file-browser.php   # requires PHP 5.4+

Running the Tests

1. run: composer install --dev to download the dependencies. (You’ll need Composer.)
2. Put an “auth info” file in “test/test.auth”. (You can generate “test/test.auth” using the “authorize.php” example script.)

./vendor/bin/phpunit test/