Dropbox Actions

Dropbox is an online file sync service.

Drafts has pre-configured actions to “Save to Dropbox” and “Append to Dropbox” which write to the /Apps/Drafts folder of your Dropbox. If these actions do not fit with your workflow, you can also make your own actions to create, append or prepend drafts to any files/folders in your Dropbox using “Dropbox Actions”.

To add a Dropbox Action, go to Settings > Custom Actions > Dropbox Actions. Then configure these values:

• Name: The label that will appear in the action list. 
• Path: The folder path to target. This can point to any folder in your Dropbox. “/” will write to files at the root level of your Dropbox. If the folder does not already exist, it will be created the first time you use the action. Tags can be used to create dynamic values.
• File: There are several strategies for file naming, here’s a discussion of each:
  • Timestamp: When the action is fired a file name will be generated based on the current time in the format YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS. If a value is provided in the “predefined file name” field, it will be used as a prefix allowing you to create multiple actions which create different series of files.
  • First Line: Use the text in the first line of the draft to create a file name. If a value is provided in the “predefined file name” field, it will be used as a prefix, allowing you to create multiple actions which create different series of files.
  • Predefined: Use the file name provided always. This is most appropriate for appending or prepending text to existing files. If you use this type with a “Create” type action (see below) and the file already exists, a new file will be created with (1), (2), etc. added as a suffix – this is actually handled at Dropbox’s end. Tags can be used to create dynamic values.
• Ext: The extension to use. Typically “txt”, “markdown”, but can be anything.
• Write: One of four possible output strategies:
  • Create: Write to a new file each time the action is used. If a file with the same file name exists already, Dropbox will create a new file with the same name and a parenthetic number attached, like “File (1)”, “File (2)”, etc.
  • Append: Add to the end of a file.
  • Prepend: Add to beginning of a file.
  • Replace: Similar to “Create”, but instead of creating a new file if the file already exists, this will completely replace the contents of the existing file with the output of the action.
• Template: The template can be used to wrap the draft with some additional text when the action is used. Several tags are supported to add timestamps, but any other text – such as separator lines – can be added as well. Read more about supported template tags.

Notes

• Prepend/Append actions may become somewhat inefficient if the target file becomes very large.
• If you want to find a starting place for your action, some importable samples are available at the Drafts Action Directory.