Flysystem Dropbox

spatie/flysystem-dropbox is a Flysystem adapter for Dropbox, built on the Dropbox API v2. It lets PHP applications treat a Dropbox account as a standard Flysystem filesystem, so the same read, write, delete, list, and metadata operations used for local disks or cloud object stores work transparently against Dropbox.

Because it plugs into League Flysystem, storage backends stay interchangeable: an app can move files to or from Dropbox without changing its filesystem calls, and it integrates cleanly with frameworks like Laravel that build on Flysystem.

What You Get

• A Flysystem v3 adapter for Dropbox
• Read, write, delete, copy, move, and list operations on Dropbox
• File and directory metadata retrieval
• Backend-agnostic file handling via the Flysystem API
• Compatibility with framework filesystem abstractions (e.g. Laravel)
• Built on the documented Dropbox API v2

Common Use Cases

• Storing user uploads in a Dropbox account from a PHP app
• Syncing generated files or backups to Dropbox
• Adding Dropbox as an interchangeable Flysystem disk
• Reading files from Dropbox to process them server-side

Under The Hood

Architecture - The library is intentionally minimal: src/DropboxAdapter.php implements League Flysystem’s FilesystemAdapter contract, translating Flysystem operations (fileExists, write, read, delete, listContents, metadata) into calls on a Dropbox API v2 client. It normalizes Dropbox paths and maps API responses into Flysystem’s FileAttributes/DirectoryAttributes value objects. Tech Stack - PHP built on league/flysystem (v3) and a Dropbox API v2 client (spatie/dropbox-api), distributed under the MIT license. The current 3.x line targets Flysystem v3; a separate v1 branch supports the older Flysystem v1. Code Quality - A small, focused, well-tested adapter with CI running its test suite and a long release history (24 releases), maintained by Spatie, a prolific PHP package author. API Design - Developer experience is excellent because the public surface is just constructing the adapter and handing it to Flysystem; all subsequent usage follows Flysystem’s well-documented, consistent API, so no Dropbox-specific knowledge is needed for day-to-day file operations.