eZ Publish Knowledge Series: WebDAV support in eZ Publish 4.1 now using eZ Components

eZ Publish 4.1 brings improved WebDAV support by replacing its original building blocks by the eZ Components WebDAV component. The new version conserves all existing features, plus it now capitalises on the solid base of eZ Components with its unit tests, documentation and extensibility. This allows for easier maintenance and addition of new features, such as locking, in subsequent eZ publish releases as well.

New features

Delete files behaviour

By default, the WebDAV files are sent to Trash when deleted. Site administrators or power users usually are responsible for emptying the Trash. If you want to permanently remove objects when browsing the content base from WebDAV ( without placing them in the Trash ), this setting must be changed in an override of content.ini :

[RemoveSettings]
# delete or trash
DefaultRemoveAction=delete

This setting is shared for controlling the web based remove operations

Copy

The previous eZ Publish WebDAV engine did not support copying of files and folders. This is now possible as well. The only existing limitation is that copying and moving files and folders across siteaccesses is not supported.

Setting up WebDAV support

For a long and thorough description of the setup procedure, consult the online documentation :

• http://ez.no/doc/ez_publish/technical_manual/4_0/features/webdav
• http://ez.no/doc/ez_publish/technical_manual/4_0/features/webdav/setting_it_up

Here is a quick starter :

• Set up a fresh 4.1 eZ Publish instance. Select the brand new eZ Flow package and make sure you installed eZ Components properly.

• Adapt your Virtual Host configuration in Apache ( for those using other webservers, simply setup a similar configuration ). You need to add the following piece of configuration :

  <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName webdav.mydomain.com
  
         DocumentRoot "<path/to/ez/publish/4.1>"
  
         RewriteEngine On
         Rewriterule .* /webdav.php
  </VirtualHost>

  Replace webdav.mydomain.com by your actual webdav-dedicated domain name, and <path/to/ez/publish/4.1> by the actual path to your existing eZ Publish 4.1 instance. You may also need to add, prior to this Virtual Host definition, the following piece of configuration :

  NameVirtualHost *:80