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Connect Dropbox to your preprocessing pipeline, and use the Unstructured Ingest CLI or the Unstructured Ingest Python library to batch process all your documents and store structured outputs locally on your filesystem.

You will need:

The Dropbox prerequisites:

  1. A Dropbox account. Get an account.

  2. A target source or destination folder in your Dropbox account. Create a folder.

  3. A Dropbox app for your Dropbox account. To learn how to create an app, click the App Console tab on the Getting Started page.

  4. Permission for your Dropbox app to read from, and write to, the target folder in your Dropbox account as needed. To do this:

    • On the Permissions tab of your Dropbox app, check the boxes files.content.read or files.content.write or both. Learn more.

    • On the Settings tab of your Dropbox app, for App folder name, set the name of the target folder in your Dropbox account for your Dropbox app to have access to.

    • Note the remote URL to the target folder, which takes the format dropbox://<path/to/folder/in/account>.

  5. An access token for your Dropbox account. Get a token. Save this token in a secure location. Do not share it with others.

The Dropbox connector dependencies:

CLI, Python
pip install "unstructured-ingest[dropbox]"

You might also need to install additional dependencies, depending on your needs. Learn more.

The following environment variables:

  • DROPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN - The value of your access token, represented by --token (CLI) or token (Python).
  • DROPBOX_REMOTE_URL - The remote URL to the target folder, represented by --remote-url (CLI) or remote_url (Python).

Now call the Unstructured Ingest CLI or the Unstructured Ingest Python library. The destination connector can be any of the ones supported. This example uses the local destination connector.

This example sends data to Unstructured API services for processing by default. To process data locally instead, see the instructions at the end of this page.

For the Unstructured Ingest CLI and the Unstructured Ingest Python library, you can use the --partition-by-api option (CLI) or partition_by_api (Python) parameter to specify where files are processed:

  • To do local file processing, omit --partition-by-api (CLI) or partition_by_api (Python), or explicitly specify partition_by_api=False (Python).

    Local file processing does not use an Unstructured API key or API URL, so you can also omit the following, if they appear:

    • --api-key $UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY (CLI) or api_key=os.getenv("UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY") (Python)
    • --partition-endpoint $UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL (CLI) or partition_endpoint=os.getenv("UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL") (Python)
    • The environment variables UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY and UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL
  • To send files to Unstructured API services for processing, specify --partition-by-api (CLI) or partition_by_api=True (Python).

    Unstructured API services also requires an Unstructured API key and API URL, by adding the following:

    • --api-key $UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY (CLI) or api_key=os.getenv("UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY") (Python)
    • --partition-endpoint $UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL (CLI) or partition_endpoint=os.getenv("UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL") (Python)
    • The environment variables UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY and UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL, representing your API key and API URL, respectively.

    Get an API key and API URL.