Matthias, 

The default link generated by dropbox ends in http….?dl=0, which brings up a webpage with a download option. 
To get a direct download, change the suffix to ?dl=1

Perhaps you could even hack galaxy’s upload script to recognize these URLs and patch them on the fly - that would be a public service to us all. 

Example: 

View in a web page (default link generated by system right-click or other dropbox bits):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lqsz785od3rxzhv/hello.txt?dl=0
Download raw file: 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lqsz785od3rxzhv/hello.txt?dl=1

I pasted this URL into usegalaxy.org, set data type to tabular, and it worked fine: https://usegalaxy.org/u/curtish-uab/h/dropboxcom-test


Regards, 
Curtis 

On Jan 16, 2018, at 8:12 AM, Matthias Bernt <m.bernt@ufz.de> wrote:

Dear list and a happy new year,

does anyone has experience with upload from dropbox to galaxy (by pasting the shared link)? I always get an empty dataset with the additional info "The uploaded file contains inappropriate HTML content".

I guess the dropbox download link is not actually a real download link but a link to a website that contains some javascript button that starts the download...

Best,
Matthias


--

-------------------------------------------
Matthias Bernt
Bioinformatics Service
Molekulare Systembiologie (MOLSYB)
Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung GmbH - UFZ/
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH - UFZ
Permoserstraße 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany
Phone +49 341 235 482296,
m.bernt@ufz.de, www.ufz.de

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