New Feature WebDAV Access Control Protocol In Sun Java System Web Server 7.0

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New Feature WebDAV Access Control Protocol In Sun Java System Web Server 7.0

The Sun Java System Web Server 7.0 Technology Preview was released today! There's a whole bunch of new stuff in 7.0, and you can use it free of charge.

Remote Content Manipulation And Remote Access Control

Whenever I create website for myself for personal use or when I need to use a website that is common to our group with more than one member modifying the content, I always want to

• Create, modify or delete files on a website via a HTTP without actually ftp'ing the files into the machine that contains the content.
• Lock a page when I am modifying a file and prevent my team members from modifying it at the same time.
• Create directories on a website just by sending a simple HTTP command remotely rather than logging into the machine where web server is installed and then creating the directory by typing "mkdir foo".
• Copy and move files around without actually logging into the machine that contains the content.
• Associating properties to a file.

More than that, I also want to

• Control who can view, modify (access) the file I have created rather than telling the web site administrator to do it for me that too without a server restart.
• Finding out how many files I myself have created inside a directory on a website.
• Finding out who has created a file (Who is the owner of a file).
  
• Finding out how many files I can view, modify inside a directory on a website.
• Finer control of privileges like write-content, write-properties, bind, write-acl than merely write privileges.

WebDAV and WebDAV Access Control Protocol support in Sun Java System Web Server 7

Check this out, we have implemented ALL this Sun Java System Web Server 7. It was an experience reading RFC and implementing it. What I found the toughest part was reusing the existing infrastructure with bare minimum changes to the core and yet meeting the deadlines !!

Sun Java System Web Server 7 now

• Conforms to WebDAV protocol as defined by the RFC 2518.
• Supports the following HTTP methods GET, HEAD, OPTIONS, PUT, LOCK, UNLOCK, MKCOL, COPY, MOVE PROPPATCH, DELETE, PROPFIND.
• Conforms to WebDAV Access Control Protocol as defined by the RFC 3744.
• Also supports ACL, REPORT(DAV:acl-principal-prop-set, DAV:principal-match, DAV:expand-property), PROPFIND (DAV:acl and DAV:current-user-privilege-set property).
• Has finer access rights like dav:all, dav:read, dav:read-acl, dav:read-current-user-privilege-set, dav:write, dav:write-acl, dav:write-properties, dav:write-content, dav:bind, dav:unbind, dav:unlock.

Assuming I am a user alpha (and I have DAV:write-acl privileges on this file). I want to allows all users in group foo, read privileges, and user alpha all privileges on a file I created, all I have to do is send an ACL request through a WebDAV client or telnet as follows

ACL /col1/myfile.html HTTP/1.1 Host: test.sun.com Content-type: text/xml; charset="utf-8" Content-Length: xxx Authorization: xxx <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <D:multistatus xmlns:D="DAV:">   <D:acl>     <D:ace>       <D:principal>           <D:href>http://test.sun.com/magnus-internal/my-ldap-auth-db/groups/foo</D:href>       </D:principal>       <D:grant>         <D:privilege><D:read/></D:privilege>       </D:grant>     </D:ace>     <D:ace>       <D:principal>           <D:href>http://test.sun.com/magnus-internal/my-ldap-auth-db/users/alpha</D:href>       </D:principal>       <D:grant>         <D:privilege><D:all/></D:privilege>       </D:grant>     </D:ace>   </D:acl> </D:multistatus>

Explore WebDAV and WebDAV Access Control features and let us know,

Posted by meena ( May 16 2006, 11:22:27 PM IST ) Permalink Comments [1]