DropNet DropBox login, how to do it programmatically in a console application?

Question

Question:

I'm using a DropBox csharp API from here:
https://github.com/dkarzon/DropNet

From the Unit tests, and the only working sample from here https://github.com/dkarzon/DropNet/blob/master/DropNet.Samples/DropNet.Samples.Web/Default.aspx.cs

I figured that it works like this:

DropNet.DropNetClient client = new DropNet.DropNetClient(strApiKey, strAppSecret);

DropNet.Models.UserLogin login = client.GetToken();
client.UserLogin = login;

var accountInfo = client.AccountInfo();
str = accountInfo.quota_info.quota.ToString();

The probem is, it throws an exception on accountinfo. (System.Net.HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized) Everything before works fine, I get the login (usertoken & usersecret) .

I think my problem is this part of the sample application:

var url = _client.BuildAuthorizeUrl(Request.Url.ToString() + "?dropboxcallback=1");
Response.Redirect(url);

Where it redirects to dropbox for a login... I don't have a web application, so I have no URL...

What I have is a console application, that should make a backup of my database every evening automatically as a service, for which it certainly is very bad requiring a webbrowser and a user which has to type in email/username + password.

How can I do a login by directly supplying the hardcoded username and password ?

If I use the sample application, then it works, but that requires typing in the username and password on the web, and that sucks big time for a console application...

You are tying to host a UI control in a console application? — paparazzo, Jul 15 '12 at 19:40
No, I'm trying to copy a file to DropBox, checking the available space first (console application). I definitely don't want a UI control, nor a UI at all. — Stefan Steiger, Jul 15 '12 at 19:41

score 6 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 16 '12 at 10:56

6

As far as I know from other API's (facebook, google, stack exchange etc.) you'll have to redirect your user to a webpage of Dropbox, where it will grant permissions to you to use it's account to perform things.

So in general it is not possible to achive this without a webbrower. Otherwise you'll have to perform really dirty hacks to hack arround the permission system of dropbox.

Please have a look at "OAuth 2.0 authorization flow" on google. Here's a diagram I found at Yahoo which show's how it works:

edited Jul 16 '12 at 10:56

Stefan Steiger

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answered Jul 15 '12 at 21:23

GameScripting

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As I already mentioned, you could try to parse the resulting HTML yourself and extract the textbox names to simulate a user has entered it's credentials and pass them to the API. Note that you may have to hack around some things like login id which is used for anti [XSRF](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Site_Request_Forgery) ;) – GameScripting Jul 16 '12 at 08:00
I am soooo screwed... Tried UbuntuOne - it's API (if it can be called that) is even worse. Now Google drive is my last hope. It uses oAuth as well, so - probably i'm still soooo crewed. Maybe it's time to write my own cloud storage provider, I sense a market gap - there are many cloud storage providers, but none have a useful API... – Stefan Steiger Jul 16 '12 at 11:25
Some important notes: 1) You only need to process the auth once, after which you can save the access token for future use programmatically. 2) Using GameScripting's technique is against the terms and will likely get your app declined or even disabled. – Greg Jul 16 '12 at 20:06
@Greg: That much I was already able to figure out after studying the other DropBox API, which is hosted on codeplex for a longer time. I never managed to extract the token - so maybe if you could tell me how... The supplied application in the codeplex API to do this is so pathetic, I had to figure out for 15-20 minutes that I need to create the text file manually where it writes down the token, only to find out that when it serializes, it returns the type-name instead of the value... I don't know who did that, but I wrote better code when I was in elementary school... – Stefan Steiger Jul 17 '12 at 11:03
@Greg: Not to mention that I found that you have to use the token and deserialize it from a file only on stackoverflow, not in the documentation. I tried the older version, where it supposedly works, but there it doesn't accept my API key. I suppose it probably is not for that version, but there is no way to get an API key for the old version... WTF ?????????????????????????? Even a bunch of monkeys would do it better... PS: This is what happens when you use google-drive: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11520826/google-drive-example-oauth2callback-not-found – Stefan Steiger Jul 17 '12 at 11:07
@Greg: Well, I suppose the 1.1 never really worked in the first place as well. – Stefan Steiger Jul 17 '12 at 11:09

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 06 '12 at 08:32

2

For uisng the DropnetClient's 4 argument constructor also we need to build web based url and allow the user to authenticate his account this is compusory thing, accesstoken will generate after the user hit allow button in authentication process

answered Nov 06 '12 at 08:32

srinivas

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 16 '12 at 00:01

1

As GameScripting explained the Dropbox API uses oauth which requires user login through the dropbox website to authenticate the access tokens.

Checkout the documentation here: http://dkdevelopment.net/what-im-doing/dropnet/ for the 3 step process.

What sort of application are you building? Normal process is to load a browser control inside the application and navigate to the login URL with it.

Also have a look at the sample Windows Phone app to give you an idea of how this process works: https://github.com/dkarzon/DropNet/blob/master/DropNet.Samples/DropNet.Samples.WP7/MainPage.xaml.cs

answered Jul 16 '12 at 00:01

dkarzon

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--> What sort of application are you building? --> console application, I said that in the question, read it before you write, please... Ever seen a WebBrowser in a console application (Lynx doesn't count, I don't want to write a console browser for C#). – Stefan Steiger Jul 17 '12 at 11:40
Is the Console app only going to be used internally with a single dropbox account? If so I'd probably suggest you manually get the tokens using a simple page like the example then "hardcode" the tokens into the application instead of the username and password. – dkarzon Jul 19 '12 at 03:01
Yes, the missing bit of info is that you need to exchange the RequestToken into an access token. Makes sense after all - public/private key encrypt the password, so no-one can reverse-engineer it. – Stefan Steiger Aug 29 '13 at 10:24

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 22 '12 at 04:41

Instead of hardcoding the username and password, you can hardcode the OAuth access token.

First, create a simple program (using the same app key) that follows the standard browser-based authorization flow. Then use it to authorize the app with the desired user. This will give you an OAuth access token (a "token" and "token secret") associated with that user and your app key.

Then, in your service-style application, just hardcode the OAuth access token (using DropNetClient's 4-argument constructor).

Stefan Steiger · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-24T07:01:23.700

It is possible, using SharpBox - tested, works.
One needs to acquire the AccessToken as a one-time-action manually, then after that, one can omit the login page and use the saved AccessToken.

http://www.jayway.com/2012/02/06/unboxing-dropbox-and-sharpbox-2/

The magic line is:

Globals.DropBox.Token = AppLimit.CloudComputing.SharpBox.StorageProvider.DropBox.DropBoxStorageProviderTools
.ExchangeDropBoxRequestTokenIntoAccessToken(
      Globals.DropBox.config
    , Globals.DropBox.AppKey, Globals.DropBox.AppSec
    , Globals.DropBox.requestToken
);

DropNet DropBox login, how to do it programmatically in a console application?

5 Answers5