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Dropbox Metadata

The Qlik Dropbox Metadata connector uses the Dropbox API to access your Dropbox metadata, like the names of files and subfolders in your Dropbox account.

Ways to access your data

You need to authenticate the connector with your Dropbox account credentials to access your metadata,. After you create a connection and select Dropbox Metadata as your data source, you are redirected to a Dropbox login page. Log in with your credentials to retrieve an authentication token, and enter it into the connector.

Creating a data source connection

Loading data from tables

After you authenticate the connector with your account credentials, use the tables to fetch your data. Some tables are preconfigured to access a specific set of data while others let you create custom queries.

Do the following:

  1. Select a table from the Tables column.
  2. Enter table parameters, if required.

    Required parameters are marked with a *.

  3. Click Data preview to see a sample of your data and to select the table fields that you want to load.

The table below outlines some of the use cases for some of the tables that are available.

Tables that can be loaded
Table Available in Description
AccountInfo Data load editor Use this to fetch the currently-authenticated user information of the Dropbox account.
Usage Data load editor Use this to display the usage information in bytes for the currently authenticated user.
ListSharedLinks Data load editor Lists the shared links for your Dropbox account.
List Data manager and Data load editor Use this to list the files and subfolders of a folder located in your Dropbox account.
Metadata Data load editor Use this to list the metadata for a file or folder. This cannot be used on the root folder.
Revisions Data load editor Use this to list the revision history of a specified file.
SearchV2 Data manager and Data load editor Use this to search your Dropbox account for files and folders. Searching file content only works on Dropbox Business accounts.

Loading data into your Qlik Sense app

Once you have finished selecting data, you can load your data into your Qlik Sense app. How you proceed will depend on whether you load data with Add data or the Data load editor.

Add data

To load data using Add data, click Add data. This will open the data in the Associations view of the data manager. In the associations view, you can continue to add data sources, transform the data, and associate the tables in Data manager.

Data profiling is enabled by default when you click Add data. Data profiling does the following:

  • Recommends data associations.
  • Auto-qualifies common fields between tables. This adds a unique prefix based on table name.
  • Maps date and time fields to autoCalendar.

Tables are not associated on common field names automatically. You can associate tables in the Associations view.

Managing data associations

Tip note

If you want to load the data directly into your app, click More and then disable data profiling.

When you add data with data profiling disabled, all existing data from data sources will be reloaded when you add the data. Tables will be associated on common field names automatically. Date and time fields will not be created.

Data load editor

To load data with the Data load editor, click Insert script once you are finished selecting the data. A load script is inserted into the script editor of the Data load editor. You can continue to edit the script in the script editor or you can click Load data to run the data load script.

Working with the Dropbox API v2 quota limits

The Qlik Web Connectors use the Dropbox API v2 to extract data from Dropbox and load it into your Qlik Sense app. While reloading your Dropbox-based app, you might receive an error message that the connector has reached the Dropbox API v2 rate limit and that all subsequent API calls will fail until the connector falls back under the throttling limit. If you receive this error message, then you have exceeded one of the API rate limits.

Reference - Dropbox API v2 documentation

You can refer to the Dropbox API v2 documentation to learn more about the requirements and restrictions imposed by the Dropbox API v2.

Dropbox API v2

Troubleshooting

You receive an error message that you have reached the API rate limit

Possible cause

You have exceeded the API limits that are imposed by the Dropbox API v2.

Proposed action

To reduce the impact of reaching API rate limits, develop your app with the following in mind:

  • Extract only the data you need.
  • Reload one Dropbox-based application at a time.
  • Ensure that loops in your script that make API calls do not result in infinite loops.

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