10.2: Dropbox

Applications like forScore communicate with services like Dropbox through an API (which defines how to talk to their servers and understand its responses), and a framework (prepackaged code that can be reused by developers so they don’t all have to write their own, very similar code).

Dropbox provides several frameworks for different types of services that they provide, and over the years these services have changed and evolved. In order to provide new functionality, Dropbox has since created a new API, version 2, and later this year they’ll be turning off the original version. In other words, their servers will no longer respond to the kinds of messages that they used to.

Since we introduced Dropbox support in forScore 3, we’ve been using their framework based on this older API. Last year they told developers about these upcoming changes, so we sat down to upgrade from that older framework to the newer version. As we did, it became increasingly clear that the tradeoffs were too high. We were including code in our app that could support every conceivable aspect of Dropbox’s service, even though we were only using a portion of it.

Just because a company provides a framework, however, doesn’t mean that you have to use it. The API itself is public, so if you choose to you can write your own version that does just what you need and nothing more. That’s exactly what we did in forScore 10.2, and the results are striking. With code that’s orders of magnitude simpler, we can provide the same functionality as before, based on the new API, that protects your security and privacy.

But this isn’t Under The Hood Improvements of the Week, it’s Feature of the Week, and we’re not going to disappoint. New in forScore 10.2, you can monitor your Dropbox account’s available storage without leaving the app. Tap Edit, then tap “My Account” in the top left-hand corner of the Services panel to see this information.

Better, newer, simpler, and all without losing anything (except the baggage).