Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning
lastmod 2025-06-15created 2019-10-299 edits
WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that makes collaboration easy among users who edit and manage documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers. A working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) defines WebDAV in RFC 4918.
The WebDAV protocol makes the Web a readable and writable medium. It also provides a framework that lets users create, change, and move documents on a server (typically a web server or web share). The most important features of the WebDAV protocol include property management for things like author or modification date, namespace management, information gathering, and overwrite protection. Property management includes creating, removing, and querying file information. Namespace management covers the ability to copy and move web pages within the server's namespace. Information gathering covers creating, removing, and listing various resources. Finally, overwrite protection handles aspects related to file locking.
The WebDAV working group concluded its work in March 2007, after the IESG accepted an incremental update to RFC 2518.
As of 2011, many modern operating systems have built-in WebDAV support. WebDAV's ports are 80 and 443, and it owns RFC 2518 and RFC 4918. In the OSI model it belongs to the application layer.
WebDAV Servers
- 15 Open Source Free WebDAV Servers
- fstanis/awesome-webdav: A curated list of awesome apps that support WebDAV and tools related to it.
List of WebDAV servers:
- Sabre - sabre/dav, sabre-io/dav: sabre/dav is a CalDAV, CardDAV and WebDAV framework for PHP
- Xandikos - jelmer/xandikos: A CalDAV/CardDAV server backed by Git
- phodav - https://wiki.gnome.org/phodav
- dave - micromata/dave: The simple WebDAV server
- hacdias/webdav: A simple and standalone WebDAV server.
- bytemark/webdav - Docker Image | Docker Hub
- ugeek/webdav - Docker Image | Docker Hub
- ViRb3/webdav-server: A simple WebDAV server in Go
- SFTPGo: Open Source SFTP Server with WebDAV Support
- sigoden/dufs: A file server that supports static serving, uploading, searching, accessing control, webdav...
- tchapi/davis: 🗓 A simple, fully translatable admin interface for sabre/dav based on Symfony 5 and Bootstrap 5, initially inspired by Baïkal.
- miltonio/milton2: Milton Java WebDAV / CalDAV / CardDAV Server Library that runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS.
- mod_dav - Apache HTTP Server Version 2.4
- Module ngx_http_dav_module
- wsgidav (Python)
History
WebDAV began in 1996, when Jim Whitehead worked with the W3C to discuss the problem of distributed authoring on the World Wide Web.[2][3] Tim Berners-Lee's original vision of the Web was of a medium for both reading and writing. Berners-Lee's first web browser, WorldWideWeb, could both view and edit web pages. But as the Web grew, it became a read-only medium for most users. Whitehead and other like-minded people wanted to fix this limitation.[4]
At a W3C meeting, it was decided to create an IETF working group, on the view that this new effort would be standardized at the IETF as an extension of HTTP.
Work on the protocol began, and it became clear that handling both distributed authoring and versioning would take too much effort, so the work would be split. The WebDAV group focused on distributed authoring and left versioning for later. Versioning was later added through the Delta-V extension.
The protocol consists of a set of new methods and headers for use in HTTP.
About WebDAV
As an extension of the HTTP/1.1 protocol, WebDAV adds new HTML methods and headers that provide authoring support for all types of web resources, including not only HTTP and XML but also text, graphics, spreadsheets, and all other formats.
The tasks you can perform with WebDAV are as follows.
- Property (metadata) manipulation. With the WebDAV methods PROPFIND and PROPPATCH you can create, remove, and query information about web pages, such as author and creation date.
- Collection and resource management. With the WebDAV methods GET, PUT, DELETE, and MKCOL you can create sets of documents and retrieve hierarchical membership listings (similar to directory listings in a file system).
- Locking. WebDAV can be used to prevent more than one person from working on a document at the same time. By using exclusive or shared locks with the WebDAV methods LOCK and UNLOCK, you can prevent the "lost update" (overwriting changes) problem.
- Namespace operations. Through WebDAV, you can use the WebDAV methods COPY and MOVE to instruct the server to copy and move web resources.