Add sync command

[Luzifer]

Usecase

I'm automatically downloading files on a headless Linux server for one of our team having near to no technical knowledge from a SFTP host and providing those files (filtered) to that team in a Dropbox folder.

Current way to use dbxcli

• Use find to list all files
• For each file execute dbxcli put ${file} ${target}

This has multiple disadvantages:

• DNS blocking using block-api.g1.dropbox.com
• Requests for files not required to sync

  Expected solution

• Call dbxcli sync ${source_folder} ${target_folder}

Advantages:

• Files are synced when required but not every time
• Fewer DNS requests / connections to establish
• More efficient sync (better for local system / better for Dropbox servers)
• Sync can be executed parallel instead of sequentially saving even more time

[grantseltzer]

What exactly would happen if I execute sync? Upload all files from source to destination? Or am I misinterpreting your proposal?

[Luzifer]

It should behave like rsync does. Checking which files to upload and then upload them.

Like I was doing a rsync --checksum local/folder/ dropbox://folder/inside/dropbox/ or vice versa…

[hut8]

A command called sync, to me, would also download each of the files that are missing locally. But then there's the issue of conflicts. How would you be able to figure out whether the local version or the remote version should be the one that gets uploaded? This seems like it would get into the territory of the official dropbox client, which continually syncs things to get closer to avoiding that problem.

[grantseltzer]

We may be able to just add a --sync flag to the put command. #54, if it gets merged, will add multiple arguments to put as well.

[skirmess]

I think a better solution would be to offer a push and a pull command instead of a sync command. That's what odeke-em/drive did for Google Drive.

[khalwat]

FWIW, the awscli offers a similar sync functionality to what is being proposed here:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/s3/sync.html

[igrep]

I also want this feature because my Dropbox account has so many files that the desktop app can't handle well (over 700k files). With this feature, I can synchronize the folders only when needed, disabling synchronizing folders with many files but infrequently updated (and I want to have the contents both at the local and remote).

[rofrol]

Try rclone https://github.com/dropbox/dbxcli/issues/60#issuecomment-497713363

[tashrifbillah]

Hi all,

dbxcli put search brought me here. So, I am just putting in an example command for uploading files that I figured:

dbxcli put myfile /myfolder/myfile

• I had to create myfolder in my dropbox account first
• Specification of the last myfile was necessary

Then, follow the instruction on the command line for authentication. I hope it helps folks like me reaching here.

[shadiakiki1986]

I created dbxcli-extras as a CLI that calls dbxcli to solve this and sync a local directory to a dropbox directory.