webdav

A WebDAV client written in JavaScript for NodeJS and the browser.

About

WebDAV is a well-known, stable and highly flexible protocol for interacting with remote filesystems via an API. Being that it is so widespread, many file hosting services such as Box, ownCloud/Nextcloud and Yandex use it as a fallback to their other interfaces.

This library provides a WebDAV client interface that makes interacting with WebDAV enabled services easy. The API returns promises and resolve with the results. It parses and prepares directory-contents requests for easy consumption, as well as providing methods for fetching things like file stats and quotas.

This library is compatibale with NodeJS version 6 and above (for version 4 support, use versions in the range of 1.*). Version 1.x is now in maintenance mode and will receive no further feature additions. It will receive the odd bug fix when necessary.

Please read the contribution guide if you plan on making an issue or PR.

Installation

Simple install as a dependency using npm:

npm install webdav --save

Usage

Usage entails creating a client adapter instance by calling the factory function createClient:

const { createClient } = require("webdav");

const client = createClient(
    "https://webdav.example.com/marie123",
    {
        username: "marie",
        password: "myS3curePa$$w0rd"
    }
);

// Get directory contents
const directoryItems = await client.getDirectoryContents("/");
// Outputs a structure like:
// [{
//     filename: "/my-file.txt",
//     basename: "my-file.txt",
//     lastmod: "Mon, 10 Oct 2018 23:24:11 GMT",
//     size: 371,
//     type: "file"
// }]

Make sure to read the API documentation for more information on the available adapter methods.

Authentication & Connection

webdav uses Basic authentication by default, if username and password are provided (if none are provided, no Authorization header is specified). It also supports OAuth tokens - simply pass the token data to the token field:

createClient(
    "https://address.com",
    {
        token: {
            "access_token": "2YotnFZFEjr1zCsicMWpAA",
            "token_type": "example",
            "expires_in": 3600,
            "refresh_token": "tGzv3JOkF0XG5Qx2TlKWIA",
            "example_parameter": "example_value"
        }
    }
);

webdav also allows for overriding the built in HTTP and HTTPS agents by setting the properties httpAgent & httpsAgent accordingly. These should be instances of node's http.Agent and https.Agent respectively.

Returned data structures

Directory contents items

Each item returned by getDirectoryContents is basically an item stat. If the details: true option is set, each item stat (as mentioned in the stat documentation) will also include the props property containing extra properties returned by the server. No particular property in props, not its format or value, is guaranteed.

Detailed responses

Requests that return results, such as getDirectoryContents, getFileContents, getQuota and stat, can be configured to return more detailed information, such as response headers. Pass { details: true } to their options argument to receive an object like the following:

Property	Type	Description
data	*	The data returned by the procedure. Will be whatever type is returned by calling without { details: true }
headers	Object	The response headers.

Item stat

Item stats are objects with properties that descibe a file or directory. They resemble the following:

{
    "filename": "/test",
    "basename": "test",
    "lastmod": "Tue, 05 Apr 2016 14:39:18 GMT",
    "size": 0,
    "type": "directory",
    "etag": null
}

or:

{
    "filename": "/image.jpg",
    "basename": "image.jpg",
    "lastmod": "Sun, 13 Mar 2016 04:23:32 GMT",
    "size": 42497,
    "type": "file",
    "mime": "image/jpeg",
    "etag": "33a728c7f288ede1fecc90ac6a10e062"
}

Properties:

Property name	Type	Present	Description
filename	String	Always	File path of the remote item
basename	String	Always	Base filename of the remote item, no path
lastmod	String	Always	Last modification date of the item
size	Number	Always	File size - 0 for directories
type	String	Always	Item type - "file" or "directory"
mime	String	Files only	Mime type - for file items only
etag	String / null	When supported	ETag of the file
props	Object	details: true	Props object containing all item properties returned by the server

Compatibility

This library has been tested to work with the following WebDAV servers or applications:

• ownCloud
• Nextcloud
• Yandex.ru
• jsDAV
• webdav-server

CORS

CORS is a security enforcement technique employed by browsers to ensure requests are executed to and from expected contexts. It can conflict with this library if the target server doesn't return CORS headers when making requests from a browser. It is your responsibility to handle this.

It is a known issue that ownCloud and Nextcloud servers by default don't return friendly CORS headers, making working with this library within a browser context impossible. You can of course force the addition of CORS headers (Apache or Nginx configs) yourself, but do this at your own risk.

Changelog

v2.4.0

2019-01-23

• #132 ETags in getDirectoryContents results and stats