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

dropbox-api, express, node.js

Solution

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).

Problem

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: - A user hits a specific api endpoint and kicks off the process. - Generate some text files via a node process and save them on the server - Transfer these files to a dropbox that I own using my own credentials (user and dropbox app). There will never be a case when a random user needs to do this.. it's a team account and this is an internal tool. The part that is tripping me up is that dropbox wants to open a browser window and get permission from me to connect to the app. The issue is that I obviously can't click the button when the process is running on the heroku instance. Is there any way for me to authorize access to the app totally in node? I feel like I could potentially use a phantomJS process to click the button - but it seems too complicated and I'd like to avoid it if possible. Here is my authentication code: ``` // Libraries var Dropbox = require('dropbox'); var DROPBOX_APP_KEY = "key"; var DROPBOX_APP_SECRET = "secret"; var dbClient = new Dropbox.Client({ key: DROPBOX_APP_KEY, secret: DROPBOX_APP_SECRET, sandbox: false }); dbClient.authDriver(new Dropbox.Drivers.NodeServer(8191)); dbClient.authenticate(function(error, client) { if (error) { console.log("Some shit happened trying to authenticate with dropbox"); console.log(error); return; } client.writeFile("test.txt", "sometext", function (error, stat) { if (error) { console.log(error); return; } console.log("file saved!"); console.log(stat); }); }); ```

Original source