Download multiple files from 1 folder of dropbox and all sub-folders of this folder

[Philippe]

Hello all,

I want to download all the files from a Dropbox global folder (including sub-folders)

I tried to use "List a folder"for Dropbox but it doesn’t show subfolders files…

Then I want to download all the PDF files from this dropbox so I will process them in a RAG to analyze all the files.

Any idea to put me on track?

Thanks a lot in advance for you advices!

Philippe

Information on your n8n setup

• n8n version: self-hosted 1.101.1
• Database (default: SQLite): Postgres
• n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
• Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): Docker
• Operating system: NAS Synology

[jabbson]

Hey @Philippe hope all is good.

What you are looking for is hidden inside “Options” for the dropbox node (operation: list). Take a look at this:

You can follow this with a Filter node to filter out only PDF files:

[Philippe]

Hello @jabbson
So easy and brilliant! thanks a lot for your help here, it works fine!

One last question though if I after the filter which selected all the PDF I add a new node “Dropbox” Download a file, will he download all the PDF ? Should I use also pathlower?

Thanks a lot again and have a super nice day!

[jabbson]

Thank you reaching out and apologies for the delay. You have probably tested already, but yes, you are right, you can put the Download a file node right after and it will pull the binaries you need), which you can then feed into your RAG.

[Philippe]

@jabbson Thanks a lot for your answer.
I’ve tried already but it crashes after a while (I have 68 pdf files to download)
With one it works fine though…
Did I miss something?

[jabbson]

Are they large PDFs? Most likely you are running into some hardware bottlenecks.

[Philippe]

they are between 1MB to 223Mb for the biggest one…
I run n8n on a Synology NAS. I don’t if there is much I can do to increase speed and capacity.
More RAM in the NAS, it has 6Gb RAM at the moment…

[jabbson]

Did you look at the resources used by the container? What is the total size of all files?

[Philippe]

In Portainer I see the following memory usage:

I checked in Dropbox total files are 800Mb Probably 80% of PDFs

[jabbson]

I don’t know man, I have never experienced this type of issue.

I would suggest you:

• try to loop files (between filter and download) instead of downloading directly
• if won’t help, create a separate topic on troubleshooting the issue with n8n crashing.

[Philippe]

@jabbson
Again well spotted! Thanks a lot I have included a loop and have been downloading all the files just before crashing.

I will try to investigate where are my issues and probably open a ticket.
Many thanks again for your help!