Custom tracks with URLs generated by Google Drive

[Shraddha Pai]

Hi,

Has anyone had luck linking tracks hosted on Google Drive to the UCSC genome browser?

I get the URL for the track the usual way (right click, "get shareable link", "Anyone with link can view"). When I submit the URL to UCSC browser I get the following error:

Error Unrecognized format line 1 of <url-goes-here>/view?usp=drive_web:

For example, here is a publicly visible small bed file (hg19).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_iVQEMEfGFqYU9aMnFIdWdKY00

I have tried changing the permissions on the file (e.g. making it so anyone on the internet and search and find the file) but those don't seem to help. 

This help page on custom tracks says that text-based tracks are probably viewable without any extra work (https://genome.ucsc.edu/goldenpath/help/customTrack.html).

Any help would be great, thanks!

Shraddha
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Shraddha Pai
Post-doctoral Fellow, http://baderlab.org
The Donnelly Center, University of Toronto

[Brian Lee]

Dear Shraddha,

Thank you for using the UCSC Genome Browser and your question about text based custom tracks from a file sharing source like Google Drives. Because external file sharing sites are always susceptible to changes it is hard to give lasting advice regarding the success of using such resources.

In the past by setting up a Google Drive Public Folder there has been success loading a custom track text file in the browser (not a google document, but rather a simple text file like the following: https://9503d018e9a9ec6120cf35feff213ec3b7d639f8-www.googledrive.com/host/0B73lfGFqMGYuS3pKY25pbFpSREU). You can see more on this Google Drive support page:https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2881970?hl=en, but it appears there is a note explaining the feature will be discontinued this August. The documentation on customTrackText.html will be updated.

Thank you again for your inquiry and using the UCSC Genome Browser. If you have any further questions, please reply to gen...@soe.ucsc.edu. All messages sent to that address are archived on a publicly-accessible forum. If your question includes sensitive data, you may send it instead to genom...@soe.ucsc.edu.

All the best,

Brian Lee
UCSC Genomics Institute

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