[HN Gopher] WebDAV isn't dead yet
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WebDAV isn't dead yet
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 67 points
Date : 2025-10-24 19:09 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.feld.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.feld.me)
| rubatuga wrote:
| No random writes is the nail in the coffin for me
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| It's HTTP, of course there's an extension for that?
|
| Sabre-DAV's implementation seems to be relatively well
| implemented. It's supported in webdavfs for example. Here's
| some example headers one might attach to a PATCH request:
| X-Update-Range: append X-Update-Range: bytes=3-6
| X-Update-Range: bytes=4- X-Update-Range: bytes=-2
|
| https://sabre.io/dav/http-patch/
| https://github.com/miquels/webdavfsl
|
| Another example is this expired draft. I don't love it, but it
| uses PATCH+Content-Range. There's some other neat ideas in
| here, and shows the versatility & open possibility (even if I
| don't love re-using this header this way).
| https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-wright-http-patch-byte...
|
| Apache has has a PUT with Content-Range,
| https://github.com/miquels/webdav-handler-rs/blob/master/doc...
|
| Great write-up in rclone on trying to support partial updates,
| https://forum.rclone.org/t/support-putstream-for-webdav-serv...
|
| It would be great to see a proper extension formalized here!
| But there are options.
| sublinear wrote:
| This blog post didn't convince me. I must assume the default for
| most web devs in 2025 is hosting on a Linux VM and/or mounting
| the static files into a Docker container. SFTP is already there
| and Apache is too.
|
| The last time I had to deal with WebDAV was for a crusty old CMS
| nobody liked using many years ago. The support on dev machines
| running Windows and Mac was a bit sketchy and would randomly have
| files skipped during bulk uploads. Linux support was a little
| better with davfs2, but then VSCode would sometimes refuse to
| recognize the mount without restarting.
|
| None of that workflow made sense. It was hard to know what
| version of a file was uploaded and doing any manual file
| management just seemed silly. The project later moved to GitLab.
| A CI job now simply SFTPs files upon merge into the main branch.
| This is a much more familiar workflow to most web devs today and
| there's no weird jank.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Copyparty has webdav and smb support (among others), which makes
| it a good candidate to combine with a Kodi client perhaps?
| Tractor8626 wrote:
| If you need sftp independent of unix auth - there is sftpgo.
|
| Sftpgo also supports webdav, but for use cases in the article
| sftp is just better.
| sylens wrote:
| Author seems to conflate S3 API with S3 itself. Most vendors are
| now including S3 API compatibility into their product because
| people are so used to using that as a model
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| More like attempt at S3 API compatibility...
| cricalix wrote:
| "FTP is dead" - shared web hosting would like a word. Quite a few
| web hosts still talk about using FTP to upload websites to the
| hosting server. Yes, these days you can upload SSH keys and
| possibly use SFTP, but the docs still talk about tools like
| FileZilla and basic FTP.
|
| Exhibit A: https://help.ovhcloud.com/csm/en-ie-web-hosting-ftp-
| storage-...
| jasongill wrote:
| Shared hosting is dying, but not yet dead; FTP is dying with it
| - it's really the last big use case for FTP now that software
| distribution and academia have moved away from FTP. As shared
| hosting continues to decline in popularity, FTP is going along
| with it.
|
| Like you, I will miss the glory days of FTP :'(
| theshackleford wrote:
| Shared hosting is in decline in much the same way as it was
| in 2015. Aka everyone involved is still making money hand
| over fist despite continued reports of its death right around
| the corner.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I haven't used old school FTP in probably 15 years. Surely
| we're not talking about using the unencrypted protocol in 2025?
|
| From that link: 2. SSH connection
| You will need advanced knowledge and an OVHcloud web hosting
| plan Pro or Performance to use this access type.
|
| Well, maybe we are. I'd cross that provider off my list right
| there.
| mastax wrote:
| Relatedly, is there a good way to expose a directory of files via
| the S3 API? I could only find alpha quality things like rclone
| serve s3 and things like garage which have their own on disk
| format rather than regular files.
| elitepleb wrote:
| consider versitygw or s3proxy
| williamjackson wrote:
| I was surprised, then not really surprised, when I found out this
| week that Tailscale's native file sharing feature, Taildrive, is
| implemented as a WebDAV server in the network.
|
| https://tailscale.com/kb/1369/taildrive
| nine_k wrote:
| What else would you expect, just out of curiosity? SMB? NFS?
| SSHFS?
| worik wrote:
| A proprietary binary patented protocol...
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I built a simple WebDAV server with Sabre to sync Devonthink
| databases. WebDAV was the only option that synced between users
| of multiple iCloud accounts, worked anywhere in the world and
| didn't require a Dropbox subscription. It's a faster sync than
| CloudKit. I don't have other WebDAV use cases but I expect this
| one to run without much maintenance or cost for years. Useful
| protocol.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I use webdav for serving media over tailscale to infuse when I'm
| on the move. SMB did not play nicely at all and nfs is not
| supported..
|
| The go stdlib has quite a good one that just works with only a
| small bit of wrapping in a main() etc.
|
| Although ive since written one in elixir that seems to handle my
| traffic better..
|
| (you can also mount them on macos and browse with finder / shell
| etc which is pretty nice)
| netsharc wrote:
| One interesting use of WebDAV is SysInternals (which is a
| collection of tools for Windows), it's accessible from Windows
| Explorer via WebDAV by going to \\\live.sysinternals.com\Tools
| gruez wrote:
| Isn't that SMB, not webdav?
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| IIRC, Windows for a while had native WebDAV support in
| Explorer, but setting it up was very non-obvious. Not sure if
| it still does, since I've moved fully to Linux.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I wonder how much better WebDAV must have gotten with newer
| versions of the HTTP stack. I only used it briefly in HTTP mode
| but found the clients to all be rather slow, barely using tricks
| like pipelining to make requests go a little faster.
|
| It's a shame the protocol never found much use in commercial
| services. There would be little need for official clients running
| in compatibity layers like you see with tools like Gqdrive and
| OneDrive on Linux. Frankly, except for the lack of standardised
| random writes, the protocol is still one of the better solutions
| in this space.
|
| I have no idea how S3 managed to win as the "standard" API for so
| many file storage solutions. WebDAV has always been right there.
| mid1221213 wrote:
| On the same topic, and because I believe too that WebDAV is not
| dead, far from it, I published a WIP lastly, part of a broader
| project, that is an nginx module that does WebDAV file server and
| is compatible with NextCloud sync clients, desktop & Android. It
| can be used with Gnome Online Accounts too, as well as with
| Nautilus (and probably others), as a WebDAV server.
|
| Have a look there: https://codeberg.org/lunae/dav-next
|
| /!\ it's a WIP, thus not packaged anywhere yet, no binary
| release, etc... but all feedback welcome
| cyberax wrote:
| I'm using WebDAV to sync files from my phone to my NAS. There
| weren't any good alternatives, really. SMB is a non-starter on
| the public Internet (SMB-over-QUIC might change that eventually),
| SFTP is even crustier, rsync requires SSH to work.
|
| What else?
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| Syncthing is pretty nice for that sort of thing.
| sunaookami wrote:
| Recently set up WebDAV for my Paperless-NGX instance so my
| scanner can directly upload scans to Paperless. I wish Caddy
| would support WebDAV out of the box, had to use this extension:
| https://github.com/mholt/caddy-webdav
| xattt wrote:
| Which scanner, if you don't mind me asking? I've got a decade+
| old ix500 that had cloud support but not local SMB.
| warabe wrote:
| Just like the author, I use WebDAV for Joplin, also Zotero. Just
| love them so much.
|
| We need to keep using open protocols such as WebDAV instead of
| depending on proprietary APIs like the S3 API.
| ctippett wrote:
| > In fact, you're already using WebDAV and you just don't realize
| it.
|
| Tailscale's drive share feature is implemented as a WebDAV share
| (connect to http://100.100.100.100:8080). You can also connect to
| Fastmail's file storage over WebDAV.
|
| WebDAV is neat.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I use it all the time to mount my CopyParty instance. Works
| great!
| nickcw wrote:
| I wrote both the WebDAV client (backend) for rclone and the
| WebDAV server. This means you can sync to and from WebDAV servers
| or mount them just fine. You can also expose your filesystem as a
| WebDAV server (or your S3 bucket or Google Drive etc).
|
| The RFCs for WebDAV are better than those for FTP but there is
| still an awful lot of not fully specified stuff which servers and
| clients choose to do differently which leads to lots of
| workarounds.
|
| The protocol doesn't let you set modification times by default
| which is important for a sync tool, but popular implementations
| like owncloud and nextcloud do. Likewise with hashes.
|
| However the protocol is very fast, much faster than SFTP with
| it's homebrew packetisation as it's based on well optimised web
| tech, HTTP, TLS etc.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| > FTP is dead (yay),
|
| Hahahaha, haha, ha, no. And probably (still)more used than WebDAV
|
| pls send help
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(page generated 2025-10-25 23:00 UTC)