gistfile1.py

"""
Somewhat minimal example demonstrating how the Python dropbox api has inconcistent UTF-8 handeling
for filenames and paths.

To simpelify upload of many files i let users copy their files to a upload folder under an
application specific dropox folder named upload. Then I download theese files to my server and makes
them availible to the application. 

My problem was that if filenames contains non ASCII characters like æøå I got an encoding error when
I tried to delete the file. The problem was resolved when i encoded f['path'] to utf-8, but I have
problems understanding why I have to encode for client.file_delete() but not when I use the same path
in client.get_file()
"""
def get_files_from_dropbox( dropbox_client):
    """
    Utility function to download files from the users dropbox/upload folder and store them on
    the server
    """
    files = dropbox_client.metadata('upload')['contents']
    for f in files:
        fname = slugify(name)
        with open(os.path.join(settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'upload', fname), "wb+") as tmp_file:
            d_file = dropbox_client.get_file(f['path'])
            tmp_file.write(d_file.read())
        dropbox_client.file_delete(f['path'].encode("utf-8"))

gistfile2.py

"""
This example failes if a file in /upload contains non ascii characters (like æøå)
"""
def get_files_from_dropbox( dropbox_client):
    """
    Utility function to download files from the users dropbox/upload folder and store them on
    the server
    """
    files = dropbox_client.metadata('upload')['contents']
    for f in files:
        fname = slugify(name)
        with open(os.path.join(settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'upload', fname), "wb+") as tmp_file:
            d_file = dropbox_client.get_file(f['path'])
            tmp_file.write(d_file.read())
        dropbox_client.file_delete(f['path'])