Automatic sync with Dropbox

Just do what other applications like Nebulous Lite does, its not that hard, if a free app offers it, why not a paid one like yours?

If App Store had a refund policy like Google Play I would have already asked for a refund.

Nebulous Lite is the ad-supported version of the $4,99 app Nebulous Notes. Sync is not easy to implement. If someone decides to offer a thing that is hard to implement in an ad-supported app for free, it doesn't make it easy to implement...

You can use the "Report a problem" link on your iTunes receipt to ask the iTunes team for a refund.

When I said "its not that hard" I meant:

1. Save the metadata hash that dropbox's API provides you and use that hash for further requests.
   
2. When you edit a local file save in an inventory which file it was.
   
3. Ask dropbox's API for modified files using the metadata hash.
   
4. If HTTP 304, skip to 8
   
5. Compare the response with files modified locally, if there is a conflict ask the user what to do.
   
6. Upload or Download conflicting files.
   
7. Download new remote files.
   
8. Upload new local files.
   
9. Clear your modified files inventory and ask dropbox for a new metadata hash.
   
10. Repeat
    

With deep directories warn the user that it will have an impact in terms of performance, and encourage her to sync specific folders instead of her root directory.

Automatic sync would be nice, but I understand that you might not have time to implement it. In the short term, please consider adding checking for remote changes. (I've already lost a little work because of this.)

All I really need to avoid data loss is for the warning dialog to only appear if the file has actually changed remotely. 

When you download a file from Dropbox, use this callback: (If you're using the deprecated callback, you'll have to remove it from your code, or this won't be called)

- (void)restClient:(DBRestClient*)client loadedFile:(NSString*)destPath contentType:(NSString*)contentType metadata:(DBMetadata*)metadata;

Store the "metadata.rev" value somewhere, it identifies the revision of the file you just downloaded.

When you upload a file, include the metadata.rev value as the "withParentRev:" argument, if it's a new file, use "nil".

If the file has changed remotely, Dropbox will call the "uploadFileFailedWithError:" callback, at which point you can ask the user if they want to overwrite the remote file, and switch to the old upload method.   If it's successful, you'll want to store the metadata.rev that you get in the uploaded file callback.

This is the callback you should be using for uploading files, so you have access to  metadata.rev. You'll want to store the new metadata.rev value whenever you upload a file.

- (void)restClient:(DBRestClient*)client uploadedFile:(NSString*)destPath from:(NSString*)srcPath metadata:(DBMetadata*)metadata;

Hopefully these enhancements wouldn't take too much effort.  Please consider them when you find time.  It'd really help prevent data loss when uploading to dropbox.

(BTW, the editor itself is really, really nice - it looks like an insane amount of work has gone into polishing it.)

Ich bearbeite natürlich die meisten Dateien auf dem Desktop. Dies führt dazu, dass die Daten in der App noch einen alten Stand haben wenn ich Sie bearbeiten will. Da ich immer relativ viele Dateien in der App habe ist es sehr aufwändig die Daten zu aktualisieren. Hier würde ich mir einen Sync mit Dropbox wünschen. Hat sich etwas in den Dropbox-Ordner geändert sollen auch nur diese Daten aktualisiert werden. Im Moment muss ich um auf Nummer Sicher zu gehen immer den ganzen Inhalt (5000 Dateien) kopieren bevor ich mit der Arbeit beginne.

Ich weiß nicht immer welche Dateien ich bearbeitet habe...

Vielleicht ist es möglich den Sync erstmal nur in eine Richtung zu ermöglichen, so dass die Daten in der App immer aktuell sind... So ist vermieden, dass man falsche Daten im Dropboxaccount hat.

===============English Version===============

I edit most files on the desktop. This means that the data in the app do have a previous state if I want to edit. Since I have always quite a few files in the app, it is very difficult to update the data. Here I would like to see a sync with Dropbox. Has something changed in the Dropbox folder to only those data are updated. At the moment I have to be on the safe side always copy the entire contents (5000 files) before I start work.

I don´t always know what files I have edited on the desktop...

Perhaps it is possible to enable the sync first in one direction, so that the data are always available in the App ... So avoid that you have incorrect data in Dropboxaccount.

If I had known that the app didn't have automatic sync I wouldn't had bought it :(

I was stupid enough to assume that if it had Dropbox support it would also have automatic synching.

I was planning to use your app for coding while travelling. In my case "coding" implies large projects with multiple files (500 at least).

Keeping track of all the files I modified in my head is definitively not an option. And as I said the projects are rather large so .... zipping and sending the project every time I decide to make a change is also not a good option.

:(

The Dropbox Sync API was just released.

I was excited, too. Unfortunately, it's closed-source and only syncs an app-specific directory, e.g. /Apps/Textastic, not an arbitrary directory in your Dropbox.

Ah yes, I just noticed it. What a shame.

Note that right now only apps with the App Folder permission can use the Sync API.

"Right now", hm. Hopefully they'll allow full access in the future.

How about enabling it for one folder, for now?

Yeah Jakimo. We could start from the beginning ;).

I wish I could vote at least 3000 times for this or something that gets us at least 30% of the way there. At least don't leave us firing blind when we upload/download from iPad: a warning for which version is newer and older, something!

Like how am I supposed to trust this app for more than keeping one file locally and never modifying it?

Textastic is a great app, and there is just a whole lot to appreciate about it (Thanks!), but I'd have to say that I'm in the must-have-dropbox-autosync camp.  It seems to me that this is the functionality that really defines Dropbox, i.e, if I'm using Dropbox I've got an autosync mindset/workflow going.  For most people, that's what "Dropbox support" really represents, the autosync convenience. If I wanted FTP, manual, edit by edit, file by file style,  I wouldn't be using Dropbox.  Edit by edit manual uploading is just fighting the Dropbox system, and I would think that most people who are worried about auto-syncing dangers have plenty of other options within Textastic for a safe save/upload cycle.

Regarding the dedicated /Apps/Textastic restriction, and as far as I can tell, this is not entirely accurate.  For example, Editorial for iPad forces you to declare a single "base" directory, but you can change that to whatever you want (I'm currently syncing just fine with a /projects/ folder that is in the Dropbox root, not under  the /Apps/... folder at all.  I've done this with at least two apps now ("Write" is the second). Both apps can access the same base directory, which helps avoid fragmenting app files across multiple /Apps/... directories.  This would at least allow those of us who are so inclined to choose an autosync folder for use with most of our Dropbox linked apps.

As with some of the others, this is a frustration that is keeping Textastic out of my "go-to" app category.

Thanks for your time,

DW