Some users set up services on Research Cloud that retrieve data from Research Drive or write to Research Drive.

In this case, it is desirable to make the access to Research Drive user-independent.

This can be achieved by using a "public" Research Drive link.


  1. The owner of the project folder on Research drive creates a public link following this tutorial.
  2. To implement the access, the public link itself and the password are required.
  3. Use a webdav-client of your service's programming environment. (For Python this may be webdavclient3)
  4. The required connection data map out as follows:
    1. "webdav_hostname": "https://researchdrive.surfsara.nl/public.php/webdav/"
    2. "webdav_login": the last section of the public link's URL (it is a "random" string)
    3. "webdav_password": the password that belongs to the generated public link


Please note that you have to change the Research Drive instance's address to use it for the "webdav_hostname".

This may be your institute's Research Drive instance or SURF's community instance, like in this example.

Replace the token "remote.php" in the Research Drive instance address with "public.php".


With these credentials your code will be able to use Research Drive according to the rights that are given to the public link.



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