Today Dropbox launched two powerful new APIs for syncing and viewing data within apps that will help the company expand beyond the traditional “file” storage system it has built its service on.
The Datastore API can save any structured data or metadata for an app. It lets developers protect their users’ data even when they make changes offline. It is essentially a syncing API, which lets developers store a user’s contacts, to-do items and other data across different devices and platforms, both online and offline.
The Drop-Ins API, and the new native Chooser, let developers pull down files from their users’ Dropboxes for display within the app. They could make sure you never lose the latest items you add to a to-do app and can access your cloud-stored photos from any app.
The goal is to give developers cross-platform support (iOS, Android and JavaScript) so users don’t have to use multiple APIs for different integrations. The new API also handles conflict-handling to avoid overwriting other developers’ work and what they call a “Datastore Explorer,” for developers to view data as it is updated.
Combined, the two new APIs illustrate the company’s efforts to give developers a way to use its back-end environment for moving and syncing data across platforms and devices. With its file system firmly in place, the move gives Dropbox a way for developers to give users deeper access to their accounts.