Create a couple of files resources (including images in the description). Hide one of the files. Enable "Mobile services": Plugins ► Web Services ► Mobile Create a Token for one teacher and one student enrolled in the course: Click on Site administration ► Plugins ► Web services ► Manage tokens Next, you can do a couple of CURL REST call simulating a WS client with the teacher and the student user . You need to replace the wstoken, courseid and the URL of your moodle instance curl 'http://localhost/m/stable_master/webservice/rest/server.php?moodlewsrestformat=json' --data 'courseids [0] =4&wsfunction=mod_resource_get_resources_by_courses&wstoken=12a2a65aeea2a177055e233f9e303218' Note, you can use jsonlint.com to validate and format the json returned string or append "| python -m json.tool" to automatically format the command output Confirm that As student you only see the visible file activity and all the settings fields As a teacher you see all the file resources. In both cases you retrieve successfully the images inclued in the resource summary (introfiles field) and the file itself (contentfiles field).