Transfer files to dropbox from node js without browser based oauth authentication

Question

I am running a nodejs + express based api server from heroku and using the dropbox-js library. Here\'s what I\'d like to do:

1. A user hits a specific api endpoint a

Answer 1

Took me a bit of testing, but it's possible.

First, you need to authenticate through the browser and save the token and token secret that are returned by Dropbox:

dbClient.authenticate(function(error, client) {
  console.log('connected...');
  console.log('token ', client.oauth.token);       // THE_TOKEN
  console.log('secret', client.oauth.tokenSecret); // THE_TOKEN_SECRET
  ...
});

Once you have the token and the secret, you can use them in the Dropbox.Client constructor:

var dbClient = new Dropbox.Client({
  key         : DROPBOX_APP_KEY,
  secret      : DROPBOX_APP_SECRET,
  sandbox     : false,
  token       : THE_TOKEN,
  tokenSecret : THE_TOKEN_SECRET
});

After that, you won't get bothered with having to authenticate through a browser anymore (or at least not until someone runs the code again without the token and the secret, which will make Dropbox generate a new token/secret pair and invalidate the old ones, or the apps credentials are revoked).