WebDAV
This page 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:8080/webdav/. Missing credentials will be requested by the client (see Web Applications). It can be accessed by either http://<httphost>:<httpport>/webdav/ or webdav://<httphost>:<httpport>/webdav/, 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).
Authentication
The WebDAV service uses the database user credentials to perform authentication and authorization. A default user can be defined in the configuration as described here.
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 General Punctuation)
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~webdav. 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 <w:lockinfo> entry.
WebDAV Clients
Please check out the following tutorials to get WebDAV running on different operating systems and with oXygen:
Changelog
Version 7.7- Added: Locking
- WebDAV API introduced:
- WebDAV API introduced