Using the Dropbox Connection Manager
The Dropbox Connection Manager is an SSIS connection manager component that can be used to establish connections with Dropbox.
To add a Dropbox connection to your SSIS package, right-click the Connection Manager area in your Visual Studio project, and choose "New Connection..." from the context menu. You will be prompted the "Add SSIS Connection Manager" window. Select the "Dropbox" item to add the new Dropbox connection manager.
The Dropbox Connection Manager contains the following three pages which configure how you want to connect to Dropbox.
- General
- Advanced Settings
- More Info
General Page
The General page on the Dropbox Connection Manager allows you to specify general settings for the connection.
- Generate Token File…
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This button allows you to log in to the service endpoint and authorize your app to generate a token.
- App Provided by KingswaySoft: use the Client Id and Secret that is provided by KingswaySoft for your convenience when setting up the connection, it should NEVER be used for production purposes.
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My Own: specify your own application registration with Constant Contact
- Client Id
- Client Secret
- RedirectUrl
- Use PKCE: Enable this option to use the PKCE OAuth authorization code flow.
Warning: By default, you are using the Dropbox authorization information (Client Id and Client Secret) provided by KingswaySoft, which is provided for your convenience when setting up the connection, and it should NEVER be used for production purposes. To obtain your own Dropbox API authorization credentials for product use.
Sign in using the default web browser
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When this option is checked the Generate Token File button will open your default web browser in order to complete the OAuth authentication.
When this option is unchecked, the Generate Token File button will complete the entire OAuth authentication process inside of the toolkit.
- Timeout (secs)
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The Timeout (secs) option allows you to specify a timeout value in seconds for the connection. The default value is 120 seconds.
- Retry on Intermittent Errors
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This is an option designed to help recover from possible intermittent outages or disruption of service so the integration does not have to be stopped because of such temporary issues. Enabling this option will allow service calls to be retried upon certain types of failure. A service call may be retried up to 3 times before an exception is fired. Retries occur after 0 seconds, 15 seconds, and 60 seconds. Warning: although we have carefully designed this feature so that such retries should only happen when it is deemed to be safe to do so, in some extreme occasions, such retried service calls could result in the creation of duplicate data.
- Show Access Token
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After completing the OAuth sign-in procedure, the Connection Manager receives an Access Token from Dropbox. The Access Token is used to authenticate and gain access to your Dropbox instance through the Dropbox API. The Access Token gets stored as a password field in the connection manager and is only displayed if you click this button. This allows you to retrieve the Access Token if you chose to store it in a config file instead.
- Test Connection
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After all the connection information has been provided, you may click the Test Connection button to test if the connection settings entered are valid.
Advanced Settings Page
The Advanced Settings page on the Dropbox Connection Manager allows you to specify some advanced and optional settings for the connection.
- Proxy Mode (since v3.0)
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The Proxy Mode option allows you to specify how you want to configure the proxy server setting. There are three options available.
- No Proxy
- Auto-detect (Using system-configured proxy)
- Manual
- Proxy Server
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Using the Proxy Server option allows you to specify the name of the proxy server for the connection.
- Port
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The Port option allows you to specify the port number of the proxy server for the connection.
- Username (Proxy Server Authentication)
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The Username option (under Proxy Server Authentication) allows you to specify the proxy user account.
- Password (Proxy Server Authentication)
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The Password option (under Proxy Server Authentication) allows you to specify the proxy user's password.
Note: The Proxy Password is not included in the connection manager's ConnectionString property by default. This is by design for security reasons. However, you can include it in your ConnectionString if you want to parameterize your connection manager. The format would be ProxyPassword=myProxyPassword; (make sure you have a semicolon as the last character). It can be anywhere in the ConnectionString.
More Info Page
The More Info page shows some basic information about the toolkit. In this page, you can find the version information of the toolkit.
OAuth Sign-In Procedure
The OAuth Sign In Procedure is initiated by clicking the Generate Token (In App)... or Generate Token (In Browser)... buttons on the Connection Manager. What this procedure does is give our application access to your Dropbox data without ever knowing your Dropbox credentials. All you need to do is sign into Dropbox and then give our app access. After that, Dropbox will give us an Access Token that will be used to access your Dropbox data. Note that if you have a proxy, you will need to fill out the proxy settings in the Advanced Settings page of the Connection Manager before initiating the OAuth Sign-In procedure.
