Linux has its own share of Dropbox clients; CLI clients as well as GUI-based clients.Dropbox Uploader is an easy-to-use Dropbox CLI client written in BASH scripting language. In this tutorial, I describehow to access Dropbox from the command line in Linux by using Dropbox Uploader.
Install and Configure Dropbox Uploader on Linux
To use Dropbox Uploader, download the script and make it executable.
$ chmod +x dropbox_uploader.sh
Make sure that you have installed curl on your system, since Dropbox Uploader runs Dropbox APIs viacurl.
To configure Dropbox Uploader, simply run dropbox_uploader.sh. When you run the script for the first time, it will ask you to grant the script access to your Dropbox account.
As instructed above, go to https://www2.dropbox.com/developers/apps on your web browser, and create a new Dropbox app. Fill in the information of the new app as shown below, and enter the app name as generated by Dropbox Uploader.
After you have created a new app, you will see app key/secret on the next page. Make a note of them.
Enter the app key and secret in the terminal window where dropbox_uploader.sh is running.dropbox_uploader.sh will then generate an oAUTH URL (e.g., http://www2.dropbox.com/1/oauth/authorize?oauth_token=XXXXXXX).
Go to the oAUTH URL generated above on your web browser, and allow access to your Dropbox account.
This completes Dropbox Uploader configuration. To check whether Dropbox Uploader is successfully authenticated, run the following command.
Dropbox Uploader v0.12 > Getting info... Name: Dan Nanni UID: XXXXXXXXXX Email: my@email_address Quota: 2048 Mb Used: 13 Mb Free: 2034 Mb
Dropbox Uploader Examples
To list all contents in the top-level directory:
To list all contents in a specific folder:
To upload a local file to a remote Dropbox folder:
To download a remote file from Dropbox to a local file:
To download an entire remote folder from Dropbox to a local folder:
To create a new remote folder on Dropbox:
To delete an entire remote folder (including all its contents) on Dropbox: