Using the Datastore API in JavaScript

dropbox.com

26 points·nigekelly··6 comments

As someone who integrated Google Drive as storage using JavaScript when that came out last year, I've been following Dropbox's efforts closely.

The keyword there is "JavaScript", i.e. the application talks directly to the storage from the browser, traffic (data) doesn't have to go via the application providers servers. I've talked to a lot of people who prefer the idea of bringing their own storage and virtually all much prefer direct comms with the storage back-end (once it's explained). Privacy is always high up the list of important things for users.

Dropbox started on this a bit later than Google, but as a developer I've been very impressed with the direction they are taking at technical level and the way they've listened to what developers have fed back. I'm liking their platform from a dev perspective more and more.

I'm rarely positive about anything, it causes me pain. If any part of the above is quoted, I will deny it.

Dropbox-as-a-backend is an interesting angle compared to other cloud providers as the user can be truly in control of his data.

Does anyone know who is leading DataStore efforts inside Dropbox? I'd like to chat as we have something complimentary coming.

I did it once about 1.5 years ago and the latency fucking killed me. Over a second is not ok. Need sub 200 ms.

Happy to chat, you find my email in my HN profile

Deleted comment

I think DropBox wants to improve its ecosystem: The more and the better apps/3rd parties are integrating DropBox the more reasons people have to use DropBox.

The Datastorage API makes Dropbox a "copy" of iCloud: You can sync stuff between devices. This was possible since the beginning of Dropbox but it was a lot of work for developers. Syncing is not an easy problem to solve.

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