pywebdav

WebDAV client library in Python. pywebdav can be used both as a library, and as a CLI.

Installation

Requirements: Python >= 3.8

All the commands must be run in the same directory as this file.

1. Create a virtual environment and activate it

python3 -m virtualenv venv

source venv/bin/activate # on Linux
.\venv\Scripts\activate # on Windows

2. Install requirements:

pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -e .  # install pywebdav locally

Alternatively, if you use the Poetry package manager you can use:

poetry install
poetry shell

to do steps 1 and 2.

Usage

As a CLI

pywebdav can be invoked as a CLI:

python -m pywebdav --help

It offers 2 commands:

1. shell: Start a shell session. Run commands like cd, ls etc using WebDAV requests. (This is easier to use)
2. request: Make a WebDAV request to a specified URL.

Run

python -m pywebdav request --help
python -m pywebdav shell --help

for detailed instructions for each command.

Examples: The following commands will make requests to demo.owncloud.com \

python -m pywebdav shell --host demo.owncloud.com -u demo -pw demo --path remote.php/dav/files/demo

python -m pywebdav request PROPFIND https://demo.owncloud.com/remote.php/dav/files/demo -u demo -pw demo

Note: 1) Pass the --debug flag to the CLI commands to view more info on the requests being made.
2) The shell does not care if you cd into a directory that doesn't exist; it'll raise errors when you try running some commands in a directory that doesn't exist. You can use the mkdir command to create a new directory, and then run commands in it.
3) The server gets reset every hour, so you may encounter some 404s if you use these commands at that time.

As a library

pywebdav offers both synchronous and asynchronous clients, and some utility functions to parse responses. There is a short example in the demo.py file.

Running Tests

Tests have been implemented using the pytest framework. To run the tests, run:

pytest -rxXs

Navigating source code

The source code lies in the pywebdav directory, and the tests in the tests directory.

pywebdav
 ┣ _async
 ┃ ┗ __init__.py
 ┣ _sync
 ┃ ┗ __init__.py
 ┣ cli.py
 ┣ shell_client.py
 ┣ types.py
 ┣ utils.py
 ┣ _unasync_compat.py
 ┣ __init__.py
 ┗ __main__.py

1. The synchronous client is automatically generated from the async client code that I write. The AsyncWebDAVClient is in the _async/__init__.py file, and the generated client is in the _sync/__init__.py file. The Client classes offer a general request method to run any sort of request, and some helper functions to run other requests:

   • propfind
   • get
   • put
   • move
   • copy

2. types.py contain some types that are used in the codebase. (DAVResponse, Resource etc)

3. utils.py contain some utility functions:

   • response_to_resources: To be used with a PROPFIND request; it parses the response XML into Resource objects

4. cli.py contains the code behind the CLI interface, while shell_client.py contains some helper methods to run the shell commands like ls, cd etc.

Similar to the client code, the tests for the synchronous client is also automatically generated, from the tests that I wrote for the asynchronous client. They lie in the tests/_sync and tests/_async directories respectively.

NOTES

1. Some parts of this code has been inspired by:
   https://github.com/amnong/easywebdav
   https://github.com/owncloud/pyocclient