Scripting WebDAV

Note: dotCMS WebDAV support is now deprecated in favor of the dotCMS CLI.

Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning, or WebDAV, is an extension of the HTTP protocol that allows you to create a connection between your local computer and a sserver to easily transfer files between machines. For WebDav the command line tool Curl is used to manipulate files on the sserver.

To learn how to install WebDav take a look at Upload via WebDav.

When working with WebDAV, we recommend using Cyberduck — particularly in a Windows environment, as Windows support for WebDAV was announced as deprecated in November 2023.

Basic WebDAV Commands#

There are four basic commands in Curl for WebDAV, Reading, Deleting, Renaming and Uploading.

Reading Files and Folders#

WebDAV uses the Curl get command to reading files or folders. The get in Curl is implied so our command would look like:

curl 'https://demo.dotcms.com/webdav/live/1/demo.dotcms.com'

In dotCMS the url pattern is

{server}/webdav/{live or working}/{languageid}/{site path}

If you are looking to get a response see Get Response Code.

Deleting Files and Folders#

The -X DELETE command is used to delete an existing file or folder at the path specified.

To delete a folder:

curl -X DELETE 'https://demo.dotcms.com/webdav/live/1/test'

To delete a file:

curl -X DELETE 'https://demo.dotcms.com/webdav/live/1/test.txt'

Renaming Files#

To rename a file we use the Curl -X MOVE command because we are essentially creating a new file with the new name moving the contents of the old file to the new one and then deleting the file.

curl -X MOVE --header
'Destination: https://demo.dotcms.com/webdav/live/1/new.txt'
'https://demo.dotcms.com/webdav/live/1/old.txt'

Creating New Folder#

Use -X MKCOL to make a new directory:

curl -X MKCOL 'https://demo.dotcms.com/webdav/live/1/new_folder'

Uploading Files#

The put command is used for uploading a file to WebDAV

curl -T '/path/to/local/file.txt' 'https://demo.dotcms.com/webdav/live/1/test'

In this example file.txt which is located at /path/to/local is being uploaded to our folder on WebDAV test

Curl --Options#

Curl provides many useful options to enhance the basic calls.

Setting a Username and Password#

To set a username and password for WebDav in curl use the following command:

curl --user 'userName:pass' 'https://demo.dotcms.com/webdav/live/1'

In this example userName is our chosen username and pass is the password to be set.

HTTP Authentication#

To utilize your username and password set above you use authentication. There are three main option commands for authentication in Curl --basic, --digest, and --anyauth.

--anyauth chooses which authentication type is best for your situation between --basic and --digest. Even though you can choose manually which authentication you would like to use --anyauthis the recommended way to do authentication, especially for those new to Curl and WebDAV.

Below show all three authentication commands

curl --user 'user:pass' 'https://demo.dotcms.com/webdav/live/1' --basic
curl --user 'user:pass' 'https://demo.dotcms.com/webdav/live/1' --digest
curl --user 'user:pass' 'https://demo.dotcms.com/webdav/live/1' --anyauth

Get Response Code#

Often in WebDAV you will want a response to know if the request was preformed. One option to know if the request was completed is to use the -sw option:

curl --user 'user:pass' -X DELETE 'https://demo.dotcms.com/webdav/live/1/test' -sw '%{http_code}'