Dropbox connector for Qlik Sense Business

[CDM]

Hello,

Is it me, or the Dropbox connector is missing in Qlik Sense Business?

Thanks for your support

[stevedark · Accepted solution]

Hi,

It's not just you. I've found it's not there for me either. It's an odd omission given some of the other connectors which are there. The straight Web connector is also conspicuous by it's absence.

All is not lost though, as you can use the REST connector and a link to the file generated from Dropbox.

Right click on a file in Dropbox and select Copy Link.

In Sense click Create Connection and select REST.

Paste the URL in the URL box, and edit the end of it so that it reads dl=1 (rather than 0).

Give the connection a name and click Create.

You can then use the Select Data icon on the connection to load from that file.

This would be a pain, as you would have to have a separate connection for each file in DropBox, but WITH CONNECTION can deal with this. You can point a script to a different file by amending the URL in the script, like this:

SQL SELECT
"Customer",
"Date",
"Ticket No",
"Task",
"Hours",
"Who"
FROM CSV (header on, delimiter ",", quote """") "CSV_source"
WITH CONNECTION
(URL "https://www.dropbox.com/s/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/customertickets-prior3months.csv?dl=1");

This will then load from a different URL to the one you created the connection with. Obviously you will need to hand-craft the select part and file format specifiers as you change the file this way.

It's not an ideal solution (the authentication with DropBox was much simpler) but it does work.

I suspect that the issue is that as the new Cloud Business is hosted somewhere different they need to go through the process of being able to authenticate with DropBox again. Hopefully this will be done soon and we can be back to full functionality.

Cheers,
Steve

http://www.quickintelligence.co.uk/

[CDM]

Thanks a lot for your fully response.

By the time a proper connector will be setup, I will go this way.

Have a good day.

Cheers.

Cyrill

[stevedark]

Hi Cyrill,

I spotted a post later on last night saying that they are trying to get it working, and it will be with us in the next couple of months.

Good to know it's not been intentionally dropped.

Have a great day yourself.

[robert99]

Hi Steve

I tested this and it doesn't work

What are the other setting. Maybe these are not correct

https://www.dropbox.com/preview/********/Tesseract%20Excel/AbsenceReport.csv?dl=1

I had role=personal on the end and took this out and replaced with dl=1

The other setting are shown below

Thanks

[robert99]

@stevedark 

[stevedark]

Hi,

The word preview in the URL makes me think that this URL is to show the file on the dropbox site, rather than a straight download. Is there another option for copying a link? 

When you use the link it should download the file, rather than showing it in the browser. 

Good luck, 

Steve

[robert99]

Hi Steve

Thanks for your reply

When I used web file connector to connect to Dropbox I didn't get private in the address. So something is different now

But Ive done some more work and still haven't been able to connect

Ill keep on trying for a bit. 

Thanks Robert

[stevedark]

The method I mentioned was just using the REST connector, not a specific Web File Connector. The URL was generated by right clicking on the file in File Explorer and selecting Copy Dropbox Link.

Hope that helps.

[robert99]

Hi Steve

Yes I know.

But before the Dropbox connector was released for QSCB I used the web File connector (I think) to connect to Dropbox.

From memory I got the address like you got (s not private etc)

So something is different.

Its not a big thing for me as I was only testing this out of interest as I hadn't used the Rest connector before

I might do a bit more investigation when time permits

Thanks Robert