7.6 Summary

The WebDAV property model gives every WebDAV resource a number of required properties and unlimited custom properties. Every property has a name, a namespace, and a value. The standard properties are in the DAV: namespace, whereas custom properties are in a namespace defined by the creator of the custom property. Property values can be strings, dates, numbers, or XML.

PROPFIND is used to discover property values. This method uses the Depth header to define how many resources the server must include in the results. Depth 1 PROPFIND requests are very common as the standard way to get a listing of a directory's contents. The PROPFIND method can be used to ask for all properties defined in RFC2518 plus all custom properties, or it can be used to specify exactly which property values to return.

PROPPATCH is used to set or change property values or remove properties. Unlike PROPFIND, the PROPPATCH method only acts on a single resource, but PROPPATCH can change several properties in one request. The method is atomic: All property changes defined in the request are made, or none is made.

WebDAV requires seven live properties. These are creationdate, displayname, getcontentlanguage, getcontentlength, getcontenttype, getlastmodified, and resourcetype.

Three more live properties may be supported. The lockdiscovery and supportedlocks properties are required if the server supports locks. The getetag property is required if the server supports ETags.