 | A WebDAV Plugin has been released allowing read access and limited write access. |
 | Not yet implemented This page discusses a proposed new feature for Confluence. Please feel free to add comments or edit this page. To vote for this to be implemented and track development progress, please see the Jira issue. |
Proposal
(Copied from CONF-3431)
Confluence should be able to act as a WebDav server:
User logs on via WebDav to the Confluence server, or maybe to an individual Confluence space. Confluence itself then becomes a virtual filesystem. Pages are represented as a hierarchy of directories that match the page heirarchy. Each directory contains a text file containing the page's wiki-text, a file for each attachment on the page, and a directory for each child-page.
News is stored in /SPACEKEY/@news/yyyy/mm/dd/News Title/
User profiles are stored in /@users/username/
Editing a page's wiki-text file edits the page. Editing a file edits the attachment. Creating a new directory creates a new page. Etc.
This solves a lot of the attachment management headaches that people have.
Other uses for WebDAV
There could be other uses for WebDAV file-based access other than just updating the content in Confluence.
- Administration functions - which ones?
- Customising layouts
- Plugin management/configuration
In what scenarios is a file system model of the system better than a web UI?
Comments (13)
Feb 16, 2006
Guy Fraser says:
How would you access old versions of attachments?How would you access old versions of attachments?
Feb 16, 2006
Charles Miller says:
Well, we could # Support WebDAV DeltaV versioning. # Pro: built into the prot...Well, we could
Feb 16, 2006
David Peterson says:
Woah is that video an actual extensions, or are you faking it with a handbuilt d...Woah - is that video an actual extensions, or are you faking it with a hand-built directory structure and a WebDAV servlet. If the former - nice! And done really quickly! Have you been working on this on the side?
Could you stick it into the public contrib space in the Developer Subversion Repo? I'd love to have a play with it...
Feb 16, 2006
Charles Miller says:
It's live and being served from Confluence, but it's very much "tip of the icebe...It's live and being served from Confluence, but it's very much "tip of the iceberg" in terms of implementation. Current plans are to have read-only by the end of April, with full read/write support in mid-June.
Standard disclaimers about the congruence of schedules and reality apply.
As for getting hold of the source, patience for now.
Feb 16, 2006
David Peterson says:
You are such a tease!You are such a tease!
Feb 16, 2006
Guy Fraser says:
Oh Charles, that's just plain evil! It's a bit like the trailers for AeonFlux wi...Oh Charles, that's just plain evil! It's a bit like the trailers for AeonFlux with Charleze (sp?) Theron in a spray on body suit, saying that the film will be out in December then putting it back to February just to antagonise the people who are foaming at the mouth. (I wouldn't foam at the mouth over Charleze Theron in a spray on body suit – oh no, not me. Honest.) Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go for a cold shower...
Feb 16, 2006
Guy Fraser says:
\drools*drools*
Feb 16, 2006
Guy Fraser says:
Ok, I've stopped foaming at the mouth now. I'd think it would probably be best t...Ok, I've stopped foaming at the mouth now. I'd think it would probably be best to support DeltaV versioning - even if no WebDav clients currently support it, they will eventually and it's best to do things properly from the start. People can always access the old versions from the attachments page should they need to.
Feb 16, 2006
David Peterson says:
I second that motion. One other idea (not related to versioning) would be to ad...I second that motion.
One other idea (not related to versioning) would be to add a read-only "Page Name.html" file, which is a simple HTML-rendered version of the page with extra links to both the "Page Name.txt" file for WebDAV mods and the 'live' website.
Feb 16, 2006
Charles Miller says:
We're ahead of you on that one. :) There's also Page Name.pdf and Page Name.doc...We're ahead of you on that one.
There's also Page Name.pdf and Page Name.doc, in case you need some other export format.
Feb 16, 2006
Guy Fraser says:
You could even have Word and PDF versions of the page :D I assume it's possible ...You could even have Word and PDF versions of the page
I assume it's possible to do the export to PDF or Word should the file be requested? Or would you have to pre-generate them in order to report filesize, etc?
If pre-generation is required, that could lead to lots of extra disk space usage
Feb 16, 2006
Guy Fraser says:
Ah, you must have posted while I was thinking hehe.Ah, you must have posted while I was thinking hehe.
Sep 04, 2006
Jon Nermut says:
Have you guys ever though about using SVN to supply Web DAV? It has a pretty goo...Have you guys ever though about using SVN to supply Web DAV? It has a pretty good implementation out of the box.
If you could use SVN as the confluence attachment store you would have an awesome configuration management tool that would provide great flexibility. My company would also be much happier about putting the kind of documents that normally go on a windows fileshare into SVN that into Confluence's proprietry file store.
The tricky bit would be syncing between confluence and SVN - i.e create a page in confluence, create a directory in SVN and vice versa.
Security might also be a bit tricky.