Use dropbox or box.net to backup user settings?

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I have a simple utility application and I was thinking about letting users backup and restore there backups to the cloud. This would also allow them to sync between different devices or new phones. I was thinking I could easily use a new dropbox account or a box.net account to store these files (most likely xml and less than 500 kb).

Has anyone tried this before or any issues that I am not thinking of? Im thinking it would be simpler (and cheaper) than AWS or ACS. Look forward to hearing any ideas..

4 Answers

Accepted Answer

I have posted to FREE open source modules for box.net and dropbox

https://github.com/aaronksaunders/ti-dropboxjs

https://github.com/aaronksaunders/appcelerator_box_com

— answered 8 months ago by Aaron Saunders
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6 Comments

  • Aaron, thanks for the link! I did not know about the box.net module!

    — commented 8 months ago by Andrew Royce

  • Aaron, I watched the forging titanium video and it seems the box module still opens the webpage to allow the user to login. Do you know if its even possible to do a 'silent login' so that on application start I would login with my credentials?

    — commented 8 months ago by Andrew Royce

  • I did something like this a while ago, sending a POST to the form's target. You'll have to take a look at the source of the page to see what params to send.

    — commented 8 months ago by Dan Tamas

  • Show 3 more comments

Seems like a great idea, both dropbox and box.net have module sin the market place. Advice - don't use xml use json :)

— answered 8 months ago by Dan Tamas
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3 Comments

  • It looks like both of those modules only prompt the user to login to there own account which wouldnt work. I did find this code by Aaron Saunders which looks to be a POST API js library and should do the trick for dropbox.

    https://github.com/aaronksaunders/ti-dropboxjs

    — commented 8 months ago by Andrew Royce

  • mmm, so you want offer the "hosting" for the data on your own account ?

    — commented 8 months ago by Dan Tamas

  • I signed up for the box.net account when they were offering free 50 gigs and have never used it. I figured that would be more than enough storage, for now at least. Plus is it really any different than AWS or ACS? I would have full access to those also and they are both 'cloud storage'.

    — commented 8 months ago by Andrew Royce

Dropbox / Box.net accounts are for end users. I think it's a safe bet that it is against their Terms Of Service to resell their service (online storage), which is basically what you're proposing. You'll need to use something like S3, ACS or Parse.net.

Dude you are inviting a world of hurt. Bad security, ToS violation.

Use the API and let the users use their own box.net/dropbox accounts.

— answered 8 months ago by Nick The Geek
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1 Comment

  • Thanks, this is still an option I was just trying to make it as easy as possible for the end user. Them just clicking 'backup' or 'restore' is alot easier then making them select a backup solution (dropbox or box.net) then making them sign in/register then backing up.

    — commented 8 months ago by Andrew Royce

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