PerlDAV -- A WebDAV client library for Perl5

PerlDAV is a Perl library for modifying content on webservers using the WebDAV protocol. Now you can LOCK, DELETE and PUT files and much more on a DAV-enabled webserver.

The PerlDAV library consists of:

• HTTP::DAV - an object-oriented Web-DAV client API.
• dave - the DAV Explorer, an end-user Unix console program for interacting with WebDAV servers. dave looks and feels like a standard Unix ftp program.

Learn more about WebDAV at http://www.webdav.org/

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LATEST VERSION AND WHAT'S NEW

The latest version is: v0.31 (released 2002/04/13 12:21:07)

Download: http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/P/PC/PCOLLINS/

• Windows support

   - Multiple people have confirmed that PerlDAV install and runs under Windows (subject to fixing the binmode bug below).

• Apache 2 mod_dav support

   - Now works with mod_dav under Apache 2.

• bug fixes

   - Fixed bug to correctly handle the put/get of filenames with spaces in them.

   - Fixed bug to allow the PUT of empty files.

   - put() now uses binmode so that it works under Windows.

   - HTTP redirect code added in the previous release was incorrectly returning a HTTP::Response instead of a HTTP::DAV::Response

   - Fixed bug to allow https for copy and move (http:// was hardcoded).

   - Fixed strange copy/move bug for Apache2.0's mod_dav.

See the Changes file for previous releases.

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INSTALLING PERLDAV

The lazy way to install PerlDAV:

   $ perl -MCPAN -e shell
   cpan> install HTTP::DAV

Or the normal way:

Retrieve the latest copy from CPAN: http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/P/PC/PCOLLINS/

   $ perl Makefile.PL # Creates the Makefile
   $ make             # Runs the makefile
   $ make test        # Optional (See Interopability below)
   $ make install     # Installs dave and HTTP::DAV

With this method you will first have to install the pre-requisites: LWP and XML::DOM, see what are the prerequisites?.

When you install PerlDAV, the HTTP::DAV library will be installed to your Perl library location (usually /usr/local/lib/perl5)

dave will be installed to /usr/local/bin. This suits most people but you can modify this by using the INSTALLBIN flag:

   $ perl Makefile.PL INSTALLBIN="/home/pcollins/bin"

What Are The Prerequisites?

• LWP (Have not tested lower than v5.48)
• XML::DOM (Have not tested lower than v1.26). Requires James Clark's expat library:
• Perl5 (Have not tested lower than v5.005)

Optional Prerequisites.

• Crypt::SSLeay if you'd like to use https. Crypt::SSLeay requires the openssl library as well. See Crypt::SSLeay's excellent install instructions for how to get https support into LWP (and hence HTTP::DAV). I've tested HTTP::DAV and Crypt::SSLeay against Apache/mod_dav with the mod_ssl plugin. Works seamlessly.
• MD5 if you'd like to use LWP's Digest authentication.

To get the latest versions of these prerequisite modules you can simply type this at the command prompt:

   $ <install expat>
then:
   $ perl -MCPAN -e shell
   cpan> install LWP
   cpan> install XML::DOM

or if you just 'install HTTP::DAV' the lovely CPAN module should just magically install all of the prerequisites for you (you'll still need to manually instal expat though).

What Systems Does It Work With?

HTTP::DAV and dave are pure perl so only needs Perl5.003 (or later). PerlDAV is known to run under Windows (although I haven't tried it myself) and should run under all Unix systems.

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WHERE ARE THE MANUALS?

Once you've installed PerlDAV, you can type:

   $ perldoc HTTP::DAV
   $ man dave

Or you can view them here: HTTP::DAV, dave.

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GETTING HELP

The perldav mailing list

There is a mailing list for PerlDAV for use by Developers and Users. Please see http://mailman.webdav.org/mailman/listinfo/perldav

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THE TEST SUITE & INTEROPERABILITY

You will notice that the standard make test command invokes a large set of test procedures, but most will be skipped. This standard test is sufficient to give you a good indication that PerlDAV has installed properly.

If you'd like to see how well PerlDAV performs against a particular DAV server then you should set the URL (and username,password) in the test suite t/TestDetails.pm. Then you can run make test again and watch the test suite perform as many operations as the server supports. Please note that the test suite will perofrm well over 200 HTTP requests to your server.

I have tested PerlDAV against IIS5, mod_dav and the Xythos WFS.

Out of the box, the test suite should NOT fail on any tests.

The test suite is the best way to test interopability between PerlDAV and other servers. I'd really like help with testing PerlDAV's interoperability. So if one or more tests fail against your server please follow the following steps:

• Determine which test is failing.
• set DEBUG to on: edit the script and change HTTP::DAV::DebugLevel(0) to (3).
• Delete previous server output: rm /tmp/perldav_debug.txt
• Run that single test again:

  $make test TEST_FILES=t/thetest.t TEST_VERBOSE=1 > testoutput.log

• Then gzip and mail me both testoutput.log and /tmp/perldav_debug.txt with details of the test environment. (My email is at the bottom)

Alternatively, you could have a shot at solving the bug yourself :)

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BUGS and TODO

Need to convert XML::DOM to a DOM Level 2 compliant parser like XML::Gdome.

See TODO for what is left to be done.

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AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT

This module is Copyright (C) 2001 by

   Patrick Collins
   G03 Gloucester Place, Kensington
   Sydney, Australia

   mailto:pcollins@cpan.org
   Phone: +61 2 9663 4916

All rights reserved.

You may distribute this module under the terms of either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file.

$Id: README.pod,v 1.9 2002/04/13 12:20:37 pcollins Exp $