WebDAV

Revision as of 15:22, 7 August 2020 by Mlink-rodrigue (talk | contribs)

Extension: WebDAV


Overview
Description: Adds a WebDAV endpoint that exposes the wiki content
State: stable Dependency: BlueSpice
Developer: HalloWelt License: GPL v3 only
Type: Category: Document Management
Edition: BlueSpice pro

Features

WebDAV provides an endpoint for accessing files on the wiki using different client applications or mounting the wiki content as shared drive.

Usage / features

Certain file types that have been uploaded to the wiki can be opened with WebDAV.

Opening the context menu for these files offers an option to open the file with the client application. Click this option for example to open a docx-file in Microsoft Word. All changes to the file are automatically saved in the wiki when the file is closed.

Protocol File extensions
ms-word doc, docx, dot, dotx, rtf, docm, dotm, odt
ms-excel xls, xlsx, csv, tsv
ms-powerpoint ppt, pptx
<any installed zip handler> zip
<any installed pdf handler> PDF

The following Microsoft Office file types cannot be opened via the context menu, but can be uploaded and versioned via Windows Explorer if the wiki configuration allows the file type: Visio, Access, Project, Publisher, SharePoint Designer, Infopath.

Technical information

Rights (permissions)

WebDAV offers several ways for authenticating the users with the client application.

MediaWiki authentication

This type of authentication makes the client application prompt the user for the wiki username and password information when opening the file and/or mounting the drive. This type of authentication can only be used in normal local login wikis (no SSO, no LDAP).

Token authentication

This type of authentication appends a token to the URL that is generated for the user and file. On all subsequent requests from the client application, the token is evaluated wiki-side and the request is allowed or rejected based on the outcome of the token verification.

This is the preferred way of authentication and can (and should) be used on all types of wikis. For mounting drives when using this type of authentication, the static token that is generated per user must be included in the URL. The user-specific drive mounting URL is available in the user preferences, under the tab User profile. This URL must be used to mount the drive.

Requirements

This extension requires BlueSpiceFoundation.

There are three extensions that make up the WebDAV suite:

  • WebDAV: Plain MediaWiki extension - provides the infrastructure.
  • BlueSpiceWebDAVClientIntegration: Integrates WebDAV into BlueSpice - namely ContextMenu.
  • BlueSpiceWebDAVMinorSave: Interferes with the saving process. It uploads a new version to the wiki only after a user has closed the client application, even if the user saved the file multiple times while editing. This allows having only one revision per complete edit rather than for each save. This functionality is largely experimental and might not work properly. Can be disabled without issue.

BlueSpiceNSFileRepoConnector interacts with WebDAV, and allows WebDAV to work with files that are in namespaces.

More info

For detailed description and usage, visit our help page.


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