Update: The Sync and Datastore SDK has been deprecated. Learn more here.
DBX, our first developer conference, was a big event for us on the Platform team. It was the first time we’ve gathered developers excited about building apps that integrate with Dropbox. We took the opportunity to release updates to all of our APIs, and also release something brand new: the Datastore API.
If you haven’t heard of datastores yet, it's something brand new for Dropbox. Now, in addition to syncing files, you can use Dropbox to sync and store structured data for your users too.
A datastore is an embedded database for your app (kind of like SQLite) that is owned by a user and stored in their Dropbox. Just like files, datastores sync seamlessly across platforms so you can work with datastores on web sites, web servers, mobile devices, and desktop computers. That means that your app can sync settings, to-do lists, contacts, game saves, or any other structured data you need.
At DBX, we launched the Datastore API in beta on iOS, Android, and JavaScript. Since then, we’ve been making steady improvements:
- We stabilized the API and removed it from beta, making it an officially supported part of the platform.
- We launched the HTTP endpoints and Python SDK so your servers can now talk to datastores.
- We added OS X support for Datastore API.
After DBX, we were excited to see the community adopt datastores and release open source tools as well. Thanks to their hard work, now you can use datastores in your Xamarin or AngularJS apps, and even with Core Data.
Today, we’re seeing developers sync all sorts of data. Some great examples of apps using datastores are Diaro, which syncs journals between Android and the web, and Planner Plus, which syncs calendars and reminders between iOS devices.
There are a lot more exciting things to come for datastores but we’re even more excited to see what you build with it. Keep an eye on this blog and on @dropboxapi on Twitter to stay informed, and if you have any requests, feedback, apps, or open source projects for the Datastore API, we’d love to hear about them on the developer forum.
