lvdkooi/dropbox-delete-folder-script

The script

This repo contains a script (DbxDeleteFolderScript.py) which is meant for periodically deleting a folder from Dropbox (by means of a Cronjob). It writes its state to a file 'last_run' which it will create the first time. The script is also capable of catching up after not having run for a while. The folders it deletes need to have a name that can be related to a date (e.g. 2020-07-14). For the first use it is necessary to run this script manually in order to set the app key and refresh token. For this, this repo also contains a helper class (DbxTokenService) which facilitates this. After that, it can run any time without any user interference.

Created by: Laurens van der Kooi

Installing dependencies

Install the following packages:

pip install dropbox
pip install isodate

Setting up Cronjobs

First, make python script executable:

chmod +x ./DbxDeleteFolderScript.py

Change the shebang line as needed:

• On OS X, the shebang line is #! /usr/bin/env python3.
• On Linux, the shebang line is #! /usr/bin/python3 (this one is already provided in the script).

Check if the script runs (you might need to reformat the script with dos2unix in your Linux-based terminal, as shown below).

dos2unix ./DbxDeleteFolderScript.py

Then in terminal:

crontab -e

and

On MacOs:

PATH = /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.8/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
52 16 * * * /Users/laurensvanderkooi/PycharmProjects/DropBoxScripting/DbxDeleteFolderScript.py

On Linux:

52 16 * * * /Users/laurensvanderkooi/PycharmProjects/DropBoxScripting/DbxDeleteFolderScript.py