webdav in practice

webdav in practice

by Tiffany Morgan -
Number of replies: 3

We are using 2.6 and have set up a WebDav repository instance (much thanks for the forums that recommended this to match our workflow from 1.9  https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=262556#p1143035). Now that I am testing this I feel like I am missing something regarding permissions. 


The webdav documentation states that "This repository is accessible by default to administrators, course creators, teachers, editing teachers and managers, but not to guests or students. Thiscapabilitycan be changed to control access to users with specific roles."


Our workflow is such that we would upload all the files outside of moodle and link to those files within the moodle resources. We can do that, but then when logged in as a student the student cannot view it without being prompted to enter the credentials for the WebDav repository. 


I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that any user with permission to upload to the webdav repository would be allowed to do so, but any user (ie students) would be able to view the image that was being called from the webdav. So for example, a teacher creates a page resource, links to an image file in the repository, saves the page. The student would access the course, click on the page resource and would see the image the teacher had placed there. Again, now the student is being asked to enter the webdav credentials when they click the page resource. 


Second, it seems strange that each time a user (who has permission to access the webdav) upload to that repository, they are asked for the credentials again, each time they try to contribute to the repository. I assumed by setting up the repository in the admin the credentials were exchanged and moodle handled the permission question. 


Hope this all makes sense--happy to answer any questions where I may not have been clear.


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In reply to Tiffany Morgan

Re: webdav in practice

by Rosario Carcò -

I remember having messed up WEBDAV in the years I was administering Moodle 1.9 and the WebDav code had just been developed for Moodle 1.9 (you will find the threads and posts on WebDav in these forums)

There are two ways, if I understand better now:

a) you can turn your Moodle Server to be a WebDav(compatible) server. That is what I wanted in those days, so as to permit the teachers to simply connect to their Moodle-Course-Directories to upload their files directly with windows-explorer or the mac-finder (bypassing the Moodle file-upload GUI)

b) you can use another server as WebDav-Repository inside Moodle

In both cases the servers you want to access must treat and control the users' permissions. As if you would log into dropBox, GoogleDocs, etc. someone has to set up groups and users to allow them accessing the files. In case b) Moodle has no chance of controlling the access-permissions on a third party server. And vice-versa.

I wanted my teachers to be able to access their Windows-Server-Shares from Moodle or the other way round, but it is not so trivial because Active-Directory and Moodle have their own access-permissions and separate accounts.

For lack of time I did not make further attempts to realize it. Moodle 2 now offers multiple-file-upload which mitigates the issue faced in Moodle 1.9 - But Moodle 2 now checks in each file into the database so that you can not simply think of accessing or uploading a file for later reference.

You could set up another Moodle server to be integrated via Mnet. Mnet Moodle servers share the same user and password database.

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In reply to Rosario Carcò

Re: webdav in practice

by Tiffany Morgan -

Thanks Rosario for the information--much appreciated. 

What you are describing is exactly what I am experiencing. Having never dealt with a WebDav before I assumed that by setting up the credentials in the admin side, and setting permissions for users, the result would be a single sign on for users with the required role permissions. While it is a bummer to know that is not possible, it is nice to know so I dont continue to try to track down an impossibility. We were hoping that WebDav would help us to mimic the file handling that we had in 1.9 now that we are in 2.6, but it doesn't look to be so.  


Thanks again for your help though!

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In reply to Tiffany Morgan

Re: webdav in practice

by Tammy Moore -

Tiffany, did you ever find a 1.9-like workflow? We were about to try Webdav ourselves. It looks like that will not work. sigh. I am so surprised at how hard it is to create a single mini-site (non-SCORM Captivate) so we just have one place to update and one set of files for multiple course files.

I have tried Files Repository but when I point to the Multiscreen file that starts the Captivate lesson as an alias it tells me it cannot find the file. Only if I make a copy, unzip, and tell it to make the multiscreen file the main file can I get it to run. That would be oaky if I could update the zip file for any updated version of the Captivate lesson. When I try that, I get invalid JSON string error on unzipping the newly uploaded zip file. I even tried using the url of the successful copy version and doing a url resource instead of a file. I can make that work, but then I would have to have that working file someplace where all students were enrolled so they could play it in addition to the one of many courses they are officially enrolled in. 

Am I totally misunderstanding something about how to get a one stop to update mini site to work across multiple course copies?

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