Forum OpenACS Q&A: WebDAV support for file-storage demo available.

Hello Dave,

Just to report that I connected easily using MS Web Folders from WinXP but couldn't write as no 'write' permissons on files storage.

Oops.

I granted permission to registered users so write access should work now. Thanks!

Dave

Wow. This is way beyond cool. I just can't stop imagining the possibilities :)

There is one little thing I noticed when I created a folder. I noticed that on File Storage it says New Folder but on Windows XP it's named Ham (what I named the new folder). When you click on New Folder (http://tdav.museatech.net/file-storage/index?folder%5fid=756) in file storage it does however say that

This folder is available via WebDAV at http://tdav.museatech.net/dav/file-storage/Ham

Very cool, Dave.  I was able to add a network place and copy a file to tdav.museatech.net from WinXP Pro.  One curious thing...the file's name (hyakugojyuuichi.zip) is correctly assigned in this view

http://tdav.museatech.net/file-storage/index?folder%5fid=726

but shows up as "untitled" in this view

http://tdav.museatech.net/file-storage/file?file%5fid=766

Bug? Intentional?

Nagita,

What do you mean by "upload a file" to a MS Web Folder. I think the only way to get a file into a Web Folder is to drag and drop it in or copy/paste it into the folder.

I would really appreciate if someone with Mac OS X could try to add a file to the demo server via WebDAV from the Finder and capture the communications eith ethereal or a similar package.

There seems to be something in the server response that the OS X client does not like. It is tricky to debug because I do not have OS X myself to test.

Thanks!

Dave

Cathy,

Interesting. I tested with Word 2003 from Windows XP and it worked fine. I could open an existing document and save it back to the same filename.

Was the file you tried to edit one that you created or an already existing file?

What version of Word were you using?

One problem was attempting to edit one of the 0 length .doc files that resulted from a previous error. Word did not like that at all. I think Word expects something back as the content. An empty Word file is about 19kb.

I also tried editing from OpenOffice.org also and it seemed to work with Word documents.

Thanks for your help!

More specifically - I get the save-as dialog when I try to save it.  If I leave the name unchanged, Word asks if I want to replace the existing file.  If I say yes, I get a message that "This file is read-only".

Hazi,

Thanks. Jeff Davis and I debugged this yesterday. Its fixed on the demo and in CVS. The content length for 0 length files was not being set in the Content-Length header and OS X did not like that.

So, as far as we know, Max OS X support is working now.

Test using Konqueror 3.2.2 on Fedora Core 1 proved successful.

Dave,

Is it sufficient to simply install webdav-support to be able to use DAV in a general purpose way, or does this service only provide DAV access in concert with file-storage?

In other words, can I simply create a symlink in my www directory to my GNU Arch (http-listing enabled) repository to create DAV-accessibility?

/R

Randy,

You can use the tDAV module, which is part of oacs-dav and also usable without OpenACS to provide WebDAV access to filesystem directories. You will need to setup a share in the config.tcl for it. Right now you need to use ns_perm for filesystem authentication, which is not really the best solution. Bart Teeuwisse has done some testing with tDAV and Arch. You can download the standalone tDAV code from http://tdav.museatech.net/file-storage/view/tDAV/tDAV-1.0b3.tar.gz

On security, It uses the same access controls as OpenACS for file-storage, so the security is the same. As Jeff says, it uses HTTP basic authentication. This means for good security you should require HTTPS for WebDAV access. After a long discussion on the AOLserver list it was my impression that the best solution is to use WebDAV over HTTPS for security.

The oacs-dav package allows WebDAV access to any content repository folder. The only package that automatically enables WebDAV support on its folders is file-storage. The tcl procedure oacs_dav::register_folder will let you WebDAV enable any content repository folder.

Dave,
i got problem, how to make multiple user with difference account/username? my webDav running on apache 2.0*/win32.

These was running ok, but still 1 account/username.
i'm indonesian, sorry my inglish so bad.
tanks
nakos

Works reasonably well for me on Windows 2000. It keeps asking me for my password, the word documents appear to be read-only, and I get an error when saving (but the doc is saved).