How to determine the Dropbox folder location programmatically?

I found the answer here. Setting s equal to the 2nd line in ~\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox\host.db and then decoding it with base64 gives the path.

def _get_appdata_path():    import ctypes    from ctypes import wintypes, windll    CSIDL_APPDATA = 26    _SHGetFolderPath = windll.shell32.SHGetFolderPathW    _SHGetFolderPath.argtypes = [wintypes.HWND,                                 ctypes.c_int,                                 wintypes.HANDLE,                                 wintypes.DWORD,                                 wintypes.LPCWSTR]    path_buf = wintypes.create_unicode_buffer(wintypes.MAX_PATH)    result = _SHGetFolderPath(0, CSIDL_APPDATA, 0, 0, path_buf)    return path_buf.valuedef dropbox_home():    from platform import system    import base64    import os.path    _system = system()    if _system in ('Windows', 'cli'):        host_db_path = os.path.join(_get_appdata_path(),                                    'Dropbox',                                    'host.db')    elif _system in ('Linux', 'Darwin'):        host_db_path = os.path.expanduser('~'                                          '/.dropbox'                                          '/host.db')    else:        raise RuntimeError('Unknown system={}'                           .format(_system))    if not os.path.exists(host_db_path):        raise RuntimeError("Config path={} doesn't exists"                           .format(host_db_path))    with open(host_db_path, 'r') as f:        data = f.read().split()    return base64.b64decode(data[1])

There is an answer to this on Dropbox Help Center - How can I programmatically find the Dropbox folder paths?

Short version:

Use ~/.dropbox/info.json or %APPDATA%\Dropbox\info.json

Long version:

Access the valid %APPDATA% or %LOCALAPPDATA% location this way:

import osfrom pathlib import Pathimport jsontry:    json_path = (Path(os.getenv('LOCALAPPDATA'))/'Dropbox'/'info.json').resolve()except FileNotFoundError:    json_path = (Path(os.getenv('APPDATA'))/'Dropbox'/'info.json').resolve()with open(str(json_path)) as f:    j = json.load(f)personal_dbox_path = Path(j['personal']['path'])business_dbox_path = Path(j['business']['path'])

You could search the file system using os.walk. The Dropbox folder is probably within the home directory of the user, so to save some time you could limit your search to that. Example:

import osdropbox_folder = Nonefor dirname, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(os.path.expanduser('~')):    for subdirname in dirnames:        if(subdirname == 'Dropbox'):            dropbox_folder = os.path.join(dirname, subdirname)            break    if dropbox_folder:        break# dropbox_folder now contains the full path to the Dropbox folder, or# None if the folder wasn't found

Alternatively you could prompt the user for the Dropbox folder location, or make it configurable via a config file.