Using the Dropbox Source Component

The Dropbox Source Component is an SSIS data flow pipeline component that can be used to read/retrieve data from Dropbox.

The component includes the following two pages to configure how you want to read data from Dropbox.

  • General
  • Columns

General Page

The General page of the Dropbox Source Component allows you to specify the general settings of the component.

Dropbox Source Editor

Connection Manager

The Dropbox Source Component requires a Dropbox connection in order to connect with Dropbox. The Connection Manager drop-down will show a list of all Dropbox connection managers that are available to your current SSIS package.

Source Item Path

The Source Item Path specifies the base item to point to for retrieval. Click the ellipsis button ('...') to open up a Dropbox browser dialog to select an item.

Item Selection Mode

The Item Selection Mode specifies what Dropbox item(s) will get selected. The Files Only modifier will still go through folders to retrieve items but will not return any records for the folders.

  • Selected Item: Retrieves only the item specified by Source Item Path.
  • Recursive: Retrieves the selected item (specified by the Source Item Path option) and all sub-items recursively.
  • Recursive (Files only): Retrieves items the same as the Recursive mode but only returns files.
  • Selected Level: Retrieves the selected item and all immediate sub-items under the folder as specified by the Source Item Path option.
  • Selected Level (Files only): Retrieves items the same as the Selected Level mode but only returns files.
Refresh Component Button

Clicking the Refresh Component button causes the component to retrieve the latest metadata and update each field to its most recent metadata.

Expression fx Button

Clicking the fx button to launch SSIS Expression Editor to enable dynamic updates of the property at run time.

Generate Documentation Button

Clicking the Generate Documentation button to generate a Word document that describes the component's metadata including relevant mapping, and so on.

Columns Page

The Columns page of the Dropbox Source Component shows you all available attributes from the object that you specified on the General page.

Dropbox Source Editor

On the top left of the grid, you can see a checkbox, which can be used to toggle the selection of all available Dropbox fields. This is a productive way to check or uncheck all available fields.

Note: As a general best practice, you should only select the Dropbox fields that are needed for the downstream pipeline components.