Konqueror as a webdav client?

[Peter Gostelow]

On 31 December 2003 02:08, Dawit A. wrote:
> On Tuesday 30 December 2003 22:36, Peter Gostelow wrote:
> > On 30 December 2003 23:59, Simon Hausmann wrote:
> > > On Wednesday 31 December 2003 02:39, Peter Gostelow wrote:
> > > > I'm trying to setup a groupware site and very interested in using
> > > > webdav.
> > > >
> > > > http://www.webdav.org/projects/ lists KDE as supporting the webdav
> > > > protocol, but neither the KDE nor Konqueror site has any webdav info
> > > > (unless I missed it).
> > > >
> > > > Also,
> > > > http://nestroy.wi-inf.uni-essen.de/Forschung/Publikationen/WETICE99/
> > > > webdav-client-impl/ offers an interesting browser technique to access
> > > > the webdav protocol by extending the html form tag.
> > > >
> > > > Is there any info on using Konqueror as a webdav client?
> > > >
> > > > As an experiment, I enabled the apache server as follows:
> > > >
> > > > # WebDav setttings
> > > > DavLockDB /var/lock/subsys
> > > > <location /dav>
> > > > Dav On
> > > > AuthType Basic
> > > > AuthName "test site"
> > > > AuthUserFile /home/www/passwd
> > > > AuthGroupFile /home/www/group
> > > > <LimitExcept OPTIONS PROPFIND>
> > > >   require valid-user admin
> > > > </LimitExcept>
> > > > </location>
> > > >
> > > > and from konqueror, entered the following url
> > > >
> > > > webdav://localhost/dav/index.html
> > > >
> > > > which did return index.html and render as expected. However, the
> > > > server logs suggest something else happened (abreviated here):
> > > >
> > > > 127.0.0.1 - "PROPFIND /index.html HTTP/1.1" 405 970
> > > > 127.0.0.1 - "PROPFIND /index.html HTTP/1.1" 405 970 "-" "user agent"
> > > > 127.0.0.1 - "PROPFIND /dav/index.html HTTP/1.1" 207 1021
> > > > 127.0.0.1 - "PROPFIND /dav/index.html HTTP/1.1" 207 1021 "-" "user
> > > > agent" 127.0.0.1 - "GET /dav/index.html HTTP/1.1" 401 1280
> > > > 127.0.0.1 - "GET /dav/index.html HTTP/1.1" 401 1280 "-" "user agent"
> > > > 127.0.0.1 - peter "GET /dav/index.html HTTP/1.1" 200 162
> > > > 127.0.0.1 - peter "GET /dav/index.html HTTP/1.1" 200 162 "-" "user
> > > > agent"
> > >
> > > What other method would you have expected Konqueror to use to retrieve
> > > index.html?
> >
> > I don't understand the question, since index.html from webdav's view is a
> > resource or file, not something to be rendered. propfind supposed to
> > return properties on index.html, such as when it was created, who the
> > author was, etc.
>
> I think you completely misunderstood the whole notion. The webdav spec.
> does not tell clients how to handle a particular resource.

Please read the nestroy link I submitted. For those who can't access the link, 
here are the relevant parts:

<quote>
Section 2. Extended HTTP: WebDAV
...
WebDAV extends HTTP/1.1 by new methods that require certain parameters. In 
HTTP/1.1 the parameters for methods are exclusively encoded in the HTTP 
header fields. Unlike HTTP/1.1, some WebDAV method parameters are encoded as 
XML [3] request bodies. These parameters are mostly application specific and 
must be provided by the user. Therefore, the use of WebDAV requires either 
new Web clients or extensions of existing Web browsers which support the 
additional functionality. In this paper we present an extension of an 
existing Web browser to demonstrate how to use WebDAV within a Web browser. 
...
Section 4.1 Requirements for a Web Browser User Interface for WebDAV

....Generally, three types of user input are needed to initiate a protocol 
request: 

Request URI. A request URI identifies the location of the resource addressed 
by a protocol method. 

Request header. In addition to the header fields defined in the protocol HTTP 
[5], WebDAV defines new header fields which are necessary to store some 
parameters needed by a method (e.g. destination for the COPY method). 

Request body. Some WebDAV methods need a request body which is always a well 
formed XML element [9]. A request body is used to store some parameters 
needed by a method (e.g. name of properties to be retrieved by the PROPFIND 
method). 

The Web browser user interface provides an input field for typing the request 
URI, but provides no means of specifying the other two parameter types. 
...
</quote>

>From the above the following points are:

1- WebDAV extends the World Wide Web and changes browser behaviour.
2- Users _must_ enter paramater values for WebDAV headers.
3- A URI only defines a resource, not the header, nor the body paramaters.
4- To use Konqueror as a WebDAV client it must provide the extra functionality 
required in 1 and 2.

Apparently, Konqueror does implement the protocol, but not as a web authoring 
client.

If you still think I don't get it, let me know.
Peter