Charlie Wu

While I was working on dropbox writer, I run into this problem. I have a maven based project that to use dropbox java SDK, but dropbox java SDK is not in any well known Maven repository. So I did some research on add dropbox sdk dependency to maven. After two days of trial and erros I’ve found a few ways to approach this.

First thing I found was to add system path property under dependency configuration, but this solution excludes the library from maven build.

Also I found people suggest that I should create my own maven repository. If you are interested this blogs have details on how to create maven repository in github. While this is a workable solution, I don’t really want to maintain a dedicated maven repository.

The best solution I found was to create an in project repository. The idea is your will create a library folder inside your project. You’ll configure your pom to point to the repository and it will act as a normal maven repository.

To get started first you need to create a library folder under your project, I’ll call this folder libs (make sure it’s in the same folder as your pom). Then you create a sub folder structure under libs and name your library using the following convention.

/groupId/artifactId/version/artifactId-verion.jar

I’ve created the following structure for dropbox sdk library

groupId = dropbox
artifactId = dropbox-sdk
version = 1.3.1
the library file = dropbox-sdk-1.3.1.jar

Next open your pom.xml and add the following block under repositories

<!-- In Project repository -->
<repository>
	<id>in-project</id>
	<name>In Project Repo</name>
	<url>file://${project.basedir}/libs</url>
</repository>

This will point to you in project repository. The name field can be anything.

Now in the pom.xml you can add dropbox dependency as following

<dependency>
	<groupId>dropbox</groupId>
	<artifactId>dropbox-sdk</artifactId>
	<version>1.3.1</version>
</dependency>

Notice the groupId, artificatId and verion follows the pattern described above.

You can add multiple dependencies by creating them in separate folder structure under libs.