WebDAV

This page presents one of the Web Application services. It describes how to use the WebDAV file system interface.

BaseX offers access to the databases and documents using the WebDAV protocol. WebDAV provides convenient means to access and edit XML documents by representing BaseX databases and documents in the form of a file system hierarchy.

The implementation in BaseX is based on the Milton library. Currently, only Basic Authentication is supported.

=Usage=

By default, the BaseX HTTP server makes the WebDAV service accessible at http://localhost:8984/webdav/. If no default credentials are specified, they will be requested by the client (see further). It can be accessed by either  or , depending on your WebDAV client.

Please note that the file size of XML documents will be displayed as 0 bytes, as the actual file size can only be determined if the full document is being returned and serialized. This may cause problems with some WebDAV clients (e.g. NetDrive or WebDrive).

=Authorization=

The WebDAV service uses the database user credentials in order to perform authentication and authorization. Initial user name and password are both set to. If database user and password are explicitly specified when starting the BaseX HTTP Server using the corresponding startup options, WebDAV will not request additional user authentication from the client.

=Root Directory=

In the WebDAV root directory, all existing databases are listed. As new resources can only be stored inside a database, it is not possible to store files in the root directory. If a file is copied on top level, a new database will be created, which contains this resource.

=Resources=

XML Documents
Uploaded files that start with an angle bracket will be stored as XML files. XML entities will be decoded during this process.

If a file is downloaded, the characters with the following code points will be encoded as entities:


 * 160 (non-breaking space)
 * 8192–8207, 8232–8239, 8287–8303 (see http://www.w3schools.com/charsets/ref_utf_punctuation.asp)

Binary Files
If XML parsing files, or if the first character of the input is no angle bracket, the file will be stored as binary resource.

=Locking=

The BaseX WebDAV implementation supports locking. It can be utilized with clients which support this feature (e.g. oXygen Editor). EXCLUSIVE and SHARED locks are supported, as well as WRITE locks.

Note: WebDAV locks are stored in a database called. If the database is deleted, it will automatically be recreated along with the next lock operations. If a resource remains locked, it can be unlocking by removing the correspondent  entry.

=WebDAV Clients=

Please check out the following tutorials to get WebDAV running on different operating systems and with oXygen:


 * Windows 7 and up
 * Windows XP
 * Mac OSX 10.4+
 * GNOME and Nautilus
 * KDE
 * oXygen Editor

=Changelog=


 * Version 7.7
 * Added: Locking


 * Version 7.0
 * WebDAV API introduced