# Best practice for handling external data? **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Created:** [20 March 2021 10:54 UTC](https://renku.discourse.group/t/best-practice-for-handling-external-data/282 "2021-03-20T10:54:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![schymans](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/renku.discourse.group/schymans/32/77_2.png) [@schymans](https://renku.discourse.group/u/schymans)\ **Post date:** [20 March 2021 10:54 UTC](https://renku.discourse.group/t/best-practice-for-handling-external-data/282/1 "2021-03-20T10:54:31Z")
The technical documentation for `renku dataset` ([Renku Command Line — Renku 0.14.1.dev7 documentation](https://renku.readthedocs.io/projects/renku-python/en/latest/commands.html#module-renku.cli.dataset)) is really helpful, thanks for your efforts. However, I wondered if there is a place where we could go through some use scenarios. For example, a common problem is that external data cannot be accessed directly through a URL, but the user has to create an account first and/or click a tick box about having read the license conditions before getting to the download button. It seems that in such a case, the only option is to download the file locally and then add it to the file in a second step. However, it is not clear how to do this, as I can only see an example for local files in the docu with the `--external` option, which would not add the file to the repo. Also, how could this be done on [renkulab.io](http://renkulab.io), if someone does not have a locally installed renku? Some more questions: - Is it good practice to store the license conditions in the dataset? If so, how? - Can we manually add a readme to each dataset in the folder of the dataset, i.e. manually create the file, and then just add it using `git add` or rather `renku dataset add`? I think we might be able to fill a separate category with questions related to external data exchange.