How to determine the Dropbox folder location programmatically?

Question

I have a script that is intended to be run by multiple users on multiple computers, and they don\'t all have their Dropbox folders in their respective home directories. I\'d

Answer 1

This should work on Win7. The use of getEnvironmentVariable("APPDATA") instead of os.getenv('APPDATA') supports Unicode filepaths -- see question titled Problems with umlauts in python appdata environvent variable.

import base64
import ctypes
import os

def getEnvironmentVariable(name):
    """ read windows native unicode environment variables """
    # (could just use os.environ dict in Python 3)
    name = unicode(name) # make sure string argument is unicode
    n = ctypes.windll.kernel32.GetEnvironmentVariableW(name, None, 0)
    if not n:
        return None
    else:
        buf = ctypes.create_unicode_buffer(u'\0'*n)
        ctypes.windll.kernel32.GetEnvironmentVariableW(name, buf, n)
        return buf.value

def getDropboxRoot():
    # find the path for Dropbox's root watch folder from its sqlite host.db database.
    # Dropbox stores its databases under the currently logged in user's %APPDATA% path.
    # If you have installed multiple instances of dropbox under the same login this only finds the 1st one.
    # Dropbox stores its databases under the currently logged in user's %APPDATA% path.
    # usually "C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data"
    sConfigFile = os.path.join(getEnvironmentVariable("APPDATA"),
                               'Dropbox', 'host.db')

    # return null string if can't find or work database file.
    if not os.path.exists(sConfigFile):
        return None

    # Dropbox Watch Folder Location is base64 encoded as the last line of the host.db file.
    with open(sConfigFile) as dbxfile:
        for sLine in dbxfile:
            pass

    # decode last line, path to dropbox watch folder with no trailing slash.
    return base64.b64decode(sLine)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print getDropboxRoot()