Hello,

I'm investigating where I could host thousands of PDFs, each of which will be associated with a specific feature in a hosted feature layer on ArcGIS Online. The URL will be an attribute in the feature layer, and made available as a simple link in the pop-up for each feature to the file. 

I initially looked at Dropbox, but scrapped it because there doesn't seem to be a way to get direct links to all the files in the public folder en masse to populate into an attribute column -- it appears that it must be done individually through the GUI.

Next, I've been looking into Google Drive. You can get a direct link to all your files via the folderID, which appears to be static (https ://googledrive.com/host/<folderID>/<filename>). I tested this out with a handful of PDF files, and it worked. So, that's possible. But I'm concerned that the folderID isn't a really a static thing (as in permanent), or that there's a quota to the number of files that can be linked to this folderID (something I think Esri does on ArcGIS Online if you store your linked files there). I'm not sure if that's really a concern, so if anyone's aware I'd appreciate it. 

Searching around for alternatives, I came across another solution, also using Google Drive. You use a link to the root folder (the webViewLink) to publish the shared folder's contents, then apparently you can use a simplified URL to link to the files in the folder. It's described in the Google apps developer blog here, though I haven't yet tried it nor do I know where exactly to start, but I did get as far as being able to retrieve the webViewLink from the shared folder. Would anyone recommend this method over the previous, simpler method? 

Another option would be to store the linked files on a private web hosting site for the chum change it costs nowadays for a basic account. Although there are a lot of files to store, it's not a lot of data. I don't even need DNS. 

If you've found success with any of these or other options or would recommend one over another, I'd be interested to know. 

Neil Curri

GIS Analyst, PVE Sheffler

Vassar College Academic Computing Consultant

[log in to unmask] | 845-437-7708

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