Goal: to be able to access all media files offline via background sync
Situation:
- some of our assessment surveys have large numbers of media files
- due to poor internet connectivity (slow, low bandwidth and intermittent) it is not feasible to look at the collected media files one by one through the Kobo website when reviewing, so we need to download media to view offline .
We had been following instructions in Downloading bulk photos, however - currently there are time-outs when downloading the very large zip file from an export, and a human needs to keep an eye on the download (this may potentially be improved via
- the Kobo-recommended alternative (Downthemall) is not supported by current versions of Firefox. Additionally, it does not download the media files into separate folders per survey.
- Dropbox handles background synchronisation well even over intermittent/unreliable internet connections (Dropbox copes with interruptions well).
- a workaround we have had to use recently is to get colleagues in a different country with a more stable internet connection to download the media files to THEIR Dropbox for us to then sync from there.
Proposal: provide side-load/remote-load capability so that Kobo media files can be directly exported from Kobo to a specified Dropbox without users needing to download files to their own PC then upload to Dropbox again.
Note whilst there are 3rd party services that offer this it would be ideal to go direct from Kobo to Dropbox as I trust these services but have not done due diligence around data protection with the other 3rd party services such as SideCLOUDLoad etc. so would not want to share my Dropbox credentials with them.
Implementation practicalities
Dropbox offers an API for purpose of saving content from URLs - see
- https://blogs.dropbox.com/developers/2015/06/programmatically-saving-a-url-to-dropbox/
- https://www.dropbox.com/developers/documentation/http/documentation#files-save_url
NB It is possible there may be a time limit from the Dropbox side (see
https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/API-Support-Feedback/File-size-limit-with-save-url/td-p/208402) but hopefully with a good internet connection from Kobo to Dropbox this threshold would not be hit.
Additional potential enhancement
- if the zip files could be unzipped on arrival at Dropbox that would also assist with analysis.
Further thoughts from others welcomed.
