You might want to look into setting up an Amazon s3 bucket. It's quite good for static files sharing and should be cheaper and easier to configure than spinning up a server. There are also some command line tools that can let you access the bucket programmatically and generate a list of links. Sasha Sent from my iPhone > On Jul 15, 2015, at 6:49 PM, Neil Curri <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > 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 > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This list (NEARC-L) is an unmoderated discussion list for all NEARC Users. > If you no longer wish to receive e-mail from this list, you can remove yourself by going to http://s.uconn.edu/nearcsubscribe. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This list (NEARC-L) is an unmoderated discussion list for all NEARC Users. If you no longer wish to receive e-mail from this list, you can remove yourself by going to http://s.uconn.edu/nearcsubscribe.