Introducing WebDAV

WebDAV stands for Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning. It is a protocol that extends HTTP and allows users to remotely upload and modify their content. To appreciate the tremendous usefulness of WebDAV, it is necessary to understand the limitations of pre-existing publishing methods. In the early days of the web, webmasters and system administrators edited the server's content directly from the shell using text editors such as vi or emacs. As the Web grew, different roles emerged: administrators maintaining the server and users and programmers providing the content. It was necessary to have mechanisms in place to allow users to upload and modify their content. This separation of tasks required access restriction policies and easy-to-use methods for updating the website content by non-technical individuals. The tools for generating web content evolved from simple text editors to sophisticated publishing tools, closer to word processors in features and ease of use.

Unfortunately, there was no standard way for those tools and individuals to upload the content. Solutions ranged from allowing users shell access to the system, to using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or other proprietary protocols. Shell access requires your users to be familiar with the basics of the Unix command line and comes with all the associated complexity and security issues of allowing direct access to the server. Using an FTP client requires end users to download and install a different tool, and also requires an FTP server. Finally, custom made scripts, file uploads via HTML forms, and proprietary protocols (such as those used by Microsoft FrontPage) raise a number of interoperability and security issues of their own.

WebDAV provides a way around these issues by providing a standard protocol that can be implemented as part of the web server. WebDAV extends the HTTP protocol with new methods for tasks such as creating, deleting, and locking resources for editing. WebDAV is implemented in Apache with mod_dav, which is distributed as a third-party module for Apache 1.3 and as a built-in module for Apache 2.0