WebDAV servers

A WebDAV server — Nextcloud, ownCloud, a Synology, a university file store — can be browsed in a panel like any folder. Choose WebDAV Connect… from the Network menu, give it a URL, and the server appears in the active panel.

It is a plugin, so you can turn it off or remove it in Configuration ▸ Plugins….

Connecting

The URL is the collection you want to land in, with your user name in front of the host:

https://anna@files.example.com/remote.php/dav/files/anna/

The password is asked for separately and goes into the Keychain through the host, never into a configuration file. Leave it empty on a later connection and the saved one is used.

Every URL you connect to is remembered — the last thirty, most recent first — and offered in the dropdown next time. That list lives in ~/Library/Application Support/PeachCommander/webdav/sites.json and contains URLs only; no password is ever written there.

Use https

Authentication is HTTP Basic, which means your user name and password travel base64-encoded — encoded, not encrypted. Over https:// the connection protects them. Over http:// they are effectively in the clear, and anything between you and the server can read them. Plain http:// is accepted, because a server on your own machine or a closed lab network is a legitimate case, but it is not a good default.

What you can do

Listing, reading, writing, creating folders, deleting, renaming and moving all work — they map onto the WebDAV verbs PROPFIND, GET, PUT, MKCOL, DELETE and MOVE. So a panel on a WebDAV server behaves like a panel on a disk for everyday work.

What to expect of it

Transfers are whole-file. A file is fetched or sent in one piece; there is no ranged transfer, so an interrupted transfer of a large file starts again rather than resuming.

Copying inside the server goes through your Mac. The plugin does not use the COPY verb, so duplicating a file on the server downloads it and uploads it again. On a slow line, moving (which the server does itself) is much faster than copying.

Nothing is locked. WebDAV's LOCK is not used, so two people writing the same file at the same time is settled by whoever saves last, exactly as it would be on a network share without locking.

Only Basic authentication. Servers that require Digest, a bearer token or a single-sign-on flow will refuse the connection. Many of those offer an app-specific password instead, which works here.