Dropbox Expands Cross Platform Ambitions With App Dev Tools

Dropbox is expanding its sync capabilities so that users can more easily share their files and data across multiple devices, platforms and apps.

The company made the announcement at its DBX developer conference, when it revealed new ways for developers to integrate Dropbox into their applications.

Data sync

The cloud storage company is currently locked in a war with some big name players in the IT field such as Apple iCloud, Microsoft SkyDrive, Amazon Cloud Drive and Google Play.

However, the company seems to be holding its own, after it revealed in a blog post that over 175 million people are now using Dropbox, and more than a billion files are synced each day.

Back in February, Dropbox launched its Sync API for iOS and Android devices. That development allowed users to sync their files, folders and data across PCs, tablets and smartphones.

Now Dropbox has announced a new set of tools, known as the Datastore API, to simplify how developers can build this functionality across devices and platforms, for other forms of data, such as saved games. Essentially, this approach does away with the need for a physical hard disk drive to store and save user data, according to the firm.

“With the Datastore API, we’re moving beyond files and providing a new model for effortlessly storing and syncing app data,” wrote Dropbox co-founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi in the blog post.

The company explained that its Sync and Core APIs are already taking care of syncing files and folders. But nowadays, people are having to deal with non traditional data that doesn’t look like a file at all. It suggested settings, contacts, to-do list items, or any user generated content such as a doodle, as possible non-traditional data that could be stored and synced.

“When you use an app built with datastores your data will be up-to-date across all devices whether you’re online or offline,” they wrote. “Imagine a task-tracking app that works on both your iPhone and the web. If it’s built with the Datastore API, you can check off items from your phone during a cross-country flight and add new tasks from your computer and Dropbox will make sure the changes don’t clobber each other.”

Dropbox said its datastores can also work offline. “If an app was built with datastores it will work fine even without an Internet connection,” it said. “When a user goes offline, the app can continue to work with all its data locally. The next time the user is online, Dropbox will take care of syncing things up.”

The company has been very busy of late after it added a Dublin-based headquarters. In February this year it also acquired Mailbox, a smartphone email application.

Then in April it was revealed that Yahoo had partnered with Dropbox to simplify the management of attachments in Yahoo Mail.

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