Dropbox Setup Guide

Follow our setup guide to connect Dropbox to Fivetran.

Prerequisites

To connect Dropbox to Fivetran, you need:

• A Dropbox account
• The ability to grant Fivetran the required permission to read from this account
• A Dropbox folder containing files with supported file types and encodings
• The URL of your Dropbox folder that you want to sync

Setup instructions

Begin Fivetran configuration

1. In the connection setup form, select the sync strategy: Magic Folder or Merge Mode.
2. Enter the Destination schema name of your choice.
3. If you selected Merge Mode as your sync strategy, enter the Destination table name.
4. Click Authorize. You will be redirected to your Dropbox account to authorize Fivetran's access.

Authorize Fivetran

1. Log in to your Dropbox account.
2. Click Authorize Connection to authorize Fivetran's read access to your files. Once you have finished, you will be redirected back to Fivetran.

Add Dropbox configuration

Magic Folder

In the setup form, enter the Folder URL path from your Dropbox account. Make sure your URL looks similar to the one illustrated below and doesn't have any extra characters after the folder name. The URL specifies the folder path in your Dropbox account in which you'd like Fivetran to look for files. We examine any files under the specified folder, except the nested subfolders, for files we can sync.

Merge Mode

Select files

Choose your configuration options. Using these configuration options, specific types of files, and more to sync only the files you need in your destination. You can use the following configuration options:

• (Optional) Base folder path - Use the base folder path to specify a portion of the file system in which you'd like Fivetran to look for files. We examine files under the specified folder and all of its nested subfolders for files we can sync. If you don't provide a prefix, we'll look through the entire file system for files to sync.

  For Dropbox Business accounts, if you are using Namespaces and if your folder is located in your home namespace, you must remove the home_path (home namespace path) from the URL. For example, if your URL is https://www.dropbox.com/home/MyNamespace/testFolder, where the home_path is /MyNamespace, enter the Folder URL as https://www.dropbox.com/home/testFolder.

• (Optional) File Pattern - Use a regular expression as the file pattern to decide whether or not to sync specific files. The pattern applies to everything under the prefix (folder path). If you're unsure what regular expression to use, you can leave this field blank, and we'll sync everything under the prefix.

  For example, if under the prefix you have a folder data, which has sub-folders, subFolder1, subFolder2, etc. These sub-folders have JSON files with the format report_03/12/2050.json. Use the following regex patterns to decide whether or not to sync specific files:

  • data/.* matches all files in the data folder, including those in subfolders.

  • data/.*json matches all JSON files in the data folder, including those in subfolders.

  • data/subFolder2/report_.*\.json matches all the JSON files in the subFolder2 folder that has a name that starts with the prefix report_.. For example, report_file.json.

  • report_\d{2}/\d{2}/\d{4}\.json matches all the JSON files that begin with the prefix report_ and are followed by a date format of DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY. For example, report_03/12/2050.json.

    We recommend that you test your regex.

• (Optional) Click Preview Files to validate the file pattern.

  You can skip this intermediate test and proceed to the next step. However, if you choose to skip, we will perform this test once you have finished your configuration.

• Compression - If your files are compressed but do not have extensions indicating the compression method, you can decompress them according to the selected compression algorithm.

  • If all of your compressed files are correctly marked with a matching compression extension (.bz2, .gz, .gzip, .tar, or .zip), you can select infer.
  • If you select uncompressed, we do not decompress the files and sync the uncompressed files.
  • If you choose a compression format, we decompress every file using the format you select. For example, if you have an automated CSV output system that GZIPs files to save space but saves them without a .gzip extension, you can set this field to GZIP. We will decompress every file that we examine using GZIP.

• (Optional) Archive Folder Pattern - Use a regular expression to filter and sync files from archived folders. We sync the files in compressed archives with filenames matching the specified pattern. If there are multiple files within archive (TAR or ZIP) folders, you can use the archive folder pattern to filter file types.

  For example, if you specify the archive folder pattern as .*json, we will sync only the files that end in a .json file extension from the archive folder.

  This is only used to filter out the files inside the archived folder. All the file matching the File Pattern will be listed

Format

• File Type - We process all files as the selected file type. Use the File Pattern field to select the file extensions you want to sync.

  If your file type is XML, we load your XML data into the _data column without flattening it.

  If your file type is CSV or TSV then enter the following details:

  • (Optional) Delimiter - Specify the delimiter used in your CSV file. If your CSV file uses a custom delimiter, replace the default comma , with your specific delimiter. For example, if your file is tab-delimited, enter \t, or if it’s pipe-delimited, enter |. If you leave this field blank, we’ll attempt to detect the delimiter for each file automatically. However, note that automatic detection may not work in all cases. If your files sync with an incorrect number of columns or use a unique delimiter, consider specifying the delimiter. You can store files with different delimiters in the same folder. For more details on how delimiter inference works, see our documentation.
  • Quote character - Typically CSVs use double quotes " to enclose a value. Set the toggle to off if you don’t want to use an enclosing character.
  • Non-Standard escape character - Set the toggle to ON if your CSV generator uses non-standard ways of escaping characters like newline, delimiter, etc. Not standard in CSVs.
  • Null Sequence - Set the toggle to ON if your CSVs use a special value indicating null. Specify the value indicating null only if you are sure your CSVs have a null sequence. Typically, CSVs have no native notion of a null character. However, some CSV generators have created one, using characters such as \N to represent null.
  • Skip Header Lines - Use this option to skip over a fixed number of header lines at the beginning of your CSV files. Set the toggle to ON, and then in the Number of skipped header lines field, specify the number of header lines you want to skip.
  • Skip Footer Lines - Use this option to skip over a fixed number footer lines at the end of your CSV files. Set the toggle to ON, and then in the Number of skipped footer lines field, specify the number of footer lines you want to skip.
  • Headerless files - Set the toggle to ON if your CSV-generating software doesn't provide a header line. Fivetran can generate generic column names and sync data rows with them.
  • Line Separator - Line separators are used in CSV files to separate one row from the next. By default, we use the new line character \n as the line separator. If you use a different line separator for your CSV files, replace \n with your custom line separator.
  If your file type is JSON or JSONL, then select the following:

  JSON Delivery Mode - Use this option to choose how Fivetran should handle your JSON data.

  • Packed: We load all your JSON data into the _data column without flattening it.
  • Unpacked: We flatten one level of columns and infer their data types.
  If your file type is XLS/XLSX/XLSM, then enter the following details:

  • If you have selected xls/xlsx/xlsm as the file type, you must select the top-left cell of the spreadsheet that you want to sync.
  • The connection setup form then requests you to identify a sample file you would like to sync. We analyze to identify eligible data sets. To determine the cell reference correctly, do the following:
    • In the Spreadsheet to find data to be synced field, enter the full path of one of your Excel files from the root folder.
    • Click Analyze sheet.
    • In the Cell Reference for Syncs drop-down menu, select the cell reference.

• Primary Key used for file process and load - Use this option to let Fivetran know how you'd like to update the files in your destination. When you modify a previously synced file, the option you select determines if we should replace the rows in the destination table or append new rows to the table:

  • If you select Upsert file using file name and line number, we will upsert your data using the surrogate primary keys _file and _line. If a file has a unique name, we will sync the data for that file as new data.
  • If you select Append file using file modified time, we will upsert your files using surrogate primary keys _file, _line, and _modified. You can track the full history of a file or set of files and your files will have a combination of old and new data or data that is updated periodically.
  • If you select Upsert file using custom primary key, you can keep the most recent version of every record, and your files will have a combination of the old and new data or data that is updated periodically. You can choose the primary keys you want to use after you save and test. For more information, see our documentation.
  You can modify the primary keys only if your initial sync fails. If your initial sync is successful, the option to modify the primary keys is not available.

Additional options

• Error Handling - Use the error handling option to choose how to handle errors in your files. If you know that your files contain some errors, you can choose to skip poorly formatted lines.

  • If you select skip, we ignore improperly formatted data within a file, allowing you to sync only valid data.
  • If you select fail, we fail the sync with an error on finding any improperly formatted data.
  We recommend that you select fail unless you are sure that you have undesirable, malformed data.

  You will receive a notification on your Fivetran dashboard if we encounter errors.

Finish Fivetran configuration

1. Click Save & Test. Fivetran will take it from here.

Fivetran tests and validates the Dropbox connection. On successful completion of the setup tests, you can sync your Dropbox data to your destination.

Setup tests

Depending on your sync strategy, Fivetran performs the following Dropbox connection tests:

• (Magic Folder Mode) The Validate Folder URL test validates your Dropbox account folder URL and checks the accessibility of the folders under the root folder you specified in the setup form.

• (Magic Folder) The Connect to Dropbox test validates the connection to your Dropbox account and checks the accessibility of the files in the Folder URL path you specified in the setup form.

• (Merge Mode) The Connecting to API test verifies whether Fivetran can successfully access the Dropbox folders.

• (Merge Mode) The Validating File Pattern test validates the file pattern regex you specified in the setup form. We perform this test only if you specify a regex in the File Pattern field.

• (Merge Mode) The Validating Archive Pattern test validates the archive pattern regex you specified in the setup form. We perform this test only if you specify a regex in the Archive Folder Pattern field.

• (Merge Mode) The Validating EscapeChar test validates the escape character you specified for your CSV files and checks the length of the character which must not be more than one. We perform this test only if you specify an escape character in the Escape Character field.

• (Merge Mode) The Validating Infer FileType test validates whether infer is added as a value in the file_type parameter for connections created using API. We perform this test only if you have set up your connector using API.

• (Merge Mode) The Multi-Character Delimiter Support test validates the length of the delimiter which must be within 15 characters. We perform this test only if you specify the delimiter for your CSV files in the Delimiter field.

• (Merge Mode) The Finding Matching Files test checks if the connector can successfully retrieve a minimum of one sample file and a maximum of ten sample files based on the configuration you specified in the setup form in Merge Mode.

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