As admin, enable "Mobile services": Site administration ► Mobile app ► Mobile settings Create a Token in the mobile app service for any user in the site (not an admin account) Click on Site administration ► Plugins ► Web services ► Manage tokens Open the console an execute this new curl request, replacing wstoken with the token you just created and the site url with yours. curl 'SITE_URL/webservice/rest/server.php?moodlewsrestformat=json' --data 'wsfunction=core_files_get_unused_draft_itemid&wstoken=WSTOKEN' | python -m "json.tool" Confirm that: The value for the component field is user The value for the filearea field is draft The value for the userid field is the user making the request id Copy somewhere the returned itemid Execute the following curl request pointing to a file in your local system (it will upload a file) you will have to replace the LOCAL_PATH_TO_FILE, ITEMID and WSTOKEN values apart from the SITEURL: curl -i -F name=filename.ext -F filedata=@/LOCAL_PATH_TO_FILE/filename.ext "SITEURL/webservice/upload.php?token=WSTOKEN&filearea=draft&itemid=ITEMID" Confirm that: As the request response, you see a json The contextid, component, filearea and itemid values matches the ones from the initial request