CODEWITHSUNDEEP
dropbox-api
Clifton Labrum
Clifton Labrum

Reputation: 14118

Developer Access to User Data in Dropbox Datastore

I use the Dropbox Datastore in an app that uses both the iOS and JavaScript SDKs. Aside from the 10MB datastore limit, it works pretty well.

But nearly every support request I get makes me wish I could have access to the user's data for debugging. Being able to see exactly what the user sees helps me to find and fix bugs very quickly.

Is there any way for me to access a user's data without logging into their account? Can I maybe store their access token and gain access to just their Dropbox Datastore data?

This is one of the attractive things about Parse: you can see all user data. While there is a lot of wisdom in sharding user data across Dropbox user accounts, it makes app debugging crazy-hard.

Any ideas? What do you do to get around this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 71

Answers (1)

Greg
Greg

Reputation: 16940

Dropbox datastores, like files, are considered the user's private data, and as such there isn't a way for an arbitrary party to gain access to said data without some sort of authorization (e.g., access to the account, having the data explicitly shared with them, etc.) Likewise, even the developer of an API app that a user happens to be using doesn't automatically get access to the data.

That said, if, as the developer of the app, you want to troubleshoot using your user's data, the most straightforward method would probably be to get an access token for that app/user pair from the user. That would replicate their setup most accurately. (Unfortunately, the Sync/Datastore SDK doesn't make it easy to extract/insert arbitrary access tokens like that though. So, in that case, this would be a bit of work to build some flow to get an access token, e.g., a small web app, and then some work to read data directly from the API.)

Alternatively, you may want to make it possible for the user to share the datastore with your own account.

In any case, it's very important that the user not be misled or confused as to what is happening or what the developer is requesting. That means being clear with user with regards to what the developer is requesting and what will be done with the data. In addition, apps should provide privacy policies in general.

Upvotes: 1

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