Content Management Guide
CHAPTER 9
This chapter describes the exteNd Director WebDAV subsystem, which provides support for the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) communications protocol. Using this protocol, the WebDAV subsystem allows you to access server-side content in the exteNd Director Content Management (CM) subsystem from third-party or custom WebDAV client applications.
This chapter includes the following topics:
The WebDAV protocol extends the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to support asynchronous collaborative authoring on the Web.
As the standard protocol that allows Web browsers to communicate with Web servers, HTTP has transformed the Web into a readable medium by allowing users to view and download individual static documents as read-only information. However, HTTP falls short of supporting write operations such as simultaneous editing of multiple resources on the Web.
WebDAV goes the next step by providing extensions to HTTP that create a distributed writable Web environment. Using WebDAV, multiple users can create content locally or remotely using WebDAV-enabled authoring tools, then save content directly to an URL on an HTTP server.
This section provides a brief overview of WebDAV.
For more detailed information on WebDAV, search on the Web for rfc2518the WebDAV specification. The following URL provided helpful information at the time this chapter was published:
The WebDAV protocol provides methods that act on Web resources, collections, and propertieskey information elements used in distributed Web authoring:
The WebDAV protocol provides extensions to HTTP through a set of open standards that can be used by any distributed authoring tool. These extensions support the following key requirements for collaborative authoring on the Web:
The exteNd Director WebDAV subsystem is designed to work with any WebDAV-compliant client application.
Works with WebDAV-compliant authoring tools When you install the exteNd Director WebDAV subsystem, you can create content in your preferred WebDAV-compliant authoring tool and still take advantage of the standard document management capabilities of the exteNd Director CM subsystem on your serverfunctions such as checkin, checkout, and versioning.
Includes WebDAV client API While most third-party WebDAV clients support these standard document management functions, they do not support the more sophisticated features of the CM subsystem, such as categorization and document creation using custom templates. To bridge this gap, the WebDAV subsystem also includes a WebDAV client API that provides classes and methods for accessing these custom features from your own client applications.
For more information about the WebDAV client API, see Building Your Own WebDAV Client.
When you install the WebDAV subsystem, you will be able to perform the following functions remotely from your WebDAV client application:
Get the latest version of your content from the content repository for editing
Lock content for editing in the content repository and know that your changes will not be overwritten by another author
Unlock content so that it is available to other authors for editing
Copy and move content across collections within the hierarchical physical infrastructure of the content repository
Upload resources and collections from the client to the server
WebDAV-enabled clients implement these functions in different ways. Consult your client documentation to learn how to use specific third-party tools with the WebDAV protocol.
For more information about the WebDAV methods exteNd Director supports, see Supported WebDAV methods.
When you save content created using a third-party WebDAV client to the exteNd Director content repository, the content is stored as a system resource. The repository handles system resources by storing a default set of properties (or metadata) along with content. The following table describes these properties and how default values are assigned:
You can change or assign values to these properties in the exteNd Director CM subsystem programmatically or using the CMS Administration Console. Some WebDAV-enabled authoring tools also allow you to edit property values on the client side.
For more information about using the CMS Administration Console, see About the CMS Administration Console.
When content is stored as a system resource, it cannot be associated with any custom document types or categories that have been defined in the CM subsystem. To create content that is more tightly integrated with these CM subsystem features, you can:
Build your own WebDAV client application using a client API provided with the exteNd Director WebDAV subsystem
For more information about the WebDAV client API, see Building Your Own WebDAV Client.
Use the CM API or the CMS Administration Console to create a document of a particular type in the CM subsystem on the server. You can then edit this content inside a WebDAV-compliant client, preserving the original document type.
The exteNd Director WebDAV subsystem requires you to provide a valid user ID and password to the WebDAV client. These values are used to authenticate your access privileges when you attempt to access secure content in the content repository from your WebDAV client.
Users do not see resources for which they do not have read access.
For more information, see Setting up the client.
When a WebDAV client requests a resource from the server, the WebDAV subsystem returns the latest version from the content repositorythough not necessarily the published version. For example, a WebDAV client cannot retrieve the published version of content if it is not the latest version.
When the WebDAV client uploads and checks in a resource, the WebDAV subsystem creates a new version and publishes it in the content repository.
You install the WebDAV subsystem when you create a project in exteNd Director using the EAR Wizard.
If you have not created an exteNd Director EAR project that includes the WebDAV subsystem, follow the procedure that follows.
If you have, you are ready to deploy the WebDAV subsystem and can skip to Deploying the exteNd Director WebDAV subsystem below the procedure.
To install the WebDAV subsystem:
Follow the instructions for creating a new exteNd Director EAR project in the chapter on configuring and deploying exteNd Director applications in Developing exteNd Director Applications.
During this process you choose between two setup options: Typical and Custom. If you select Typical setup, the WebDAV subsystem is installed automatically as part of the exteNd Director EAR with the following defaults:
Parameter |
Default |
---|---|
Service Context Root |
WebDAVService |
Servlet Path |
main |
Require locks for update operation |
disabled |
If you opt for Custom setup, you must include the WebDAV subsystem explicitly and then customize these parameters as needed.
After creating the EAR project, select Archive Layout and look for WebDAVService.war.
Expand WebDAVService.war, navigate to WEB-INF/lib, and double-click WebDAVService.jar to view the WebDAV subsystem classes you have just installed in your exteNd Director EAR project.
Now you are ready to deploy the WebDAV subsystem to your J2EE application server.
You deploy the WebDAV subsystem by deploying the EAR in which it resides.
Before deploying the exteNd Director WebDAV subsystem, you must have installed the following software:
If you are deploying to the Novell exteNdTM Application Server, you must also create a new (empty) database.
For a list of supported application servers and databases, see the exteNd Director Release Notes.
After you deploy the WebDAV subsystem, you can connect a WebDAV-enabled client to the exteNd Director content repository. To establish this connection, you must provide the following parameters to the client:
User ID and password that are valid for exteNd Director (not a server user ID and password)
URL that references the directory on the WebDAV server you want to connect to
The structure of the URL for the Novell WebDAV server is:
http://server name/database name/EAR namespace/service context root/servlet path/
The structure of the URL for WebLogic or WebSphere WebDAV servers is:
http://server name/EAR namespace/service context root/servlet path/
For example, if your Novell exteNd Application Server is localhost, database name is Director, EAR namespace is DirectorEAR, service context root is WebDAVService, and servlet path is main, the URL should look like this:
http://localhost/Director/DirectorEAR/WebDAVService/main/
To learn how to provide these parameters and connect to a site (in this case the exteNd Director content repository) using the WebDAV protocol, consult client documentation.
The exteNd Director WebDAV subsystem supports the following WebDAV methods. To learn how to perform these functions from your WebDAV-enabled authoring tool, consult client documentation:
Novell provides a WebDAV serverdeployed and publicly availableagainst which you can test your WebDAV clients. This server provides the features of the Novell WebDAV implementation.
CAUTION: Do not use this server for production applications. Novell cannot be responsible for content uploaded by anonymous users, and periodically purges user data.
To access the Novell public WebDAV server (general steps):
Access the server from your WebDAV client using this URL:
http://webdav.silverstream.com/Director/WebDAVService/main
When prompted, provide these credentials:
Credential |
Value |
---|---|
User ID |
devcenter |
Password |
rocks |
To access the Novell public WebDAV server from a Windows 2000 SP2 client:
Enter the URL for the public WebDAV server:
http://webdav.silverstream.com/Director/WebDAVService/main
When prompted, provide these credentials:
Credential |
Value |
---|---|
User name |
devcenter |
Password |
rocks |
Enter a namefor example, Public WebDAV Serverand click Finish.
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