WebDAV

Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning ( WebDAV) is an extension of the  Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on  World Wide Web servers. A  working group of the  Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) defined WebDAV in  RFC 4918.

The WebDAV protocol makes the Web a readable and writable medium.[1]  It provides a framework for users to create, change and move documents on a server; typically a web server or web share. The most important features of the WebDAV protocol include the maintenance of properties about an author or modification date, namespace management, collections, and overwrite protection. Maintenance of properties includes such things as the creation, removal, and querying of file information. Namespace management deals with the ability to copy and move web pages within a server’s namespace. Collections deal with the creation, removal, and listing of various resources. Lastly, overwrite protection handles aspects related to locking of files.

The WebDAV working group concluded its work in March 2007, after the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) accepted an incremental update to RFC 2518. Other extensions left unfinished at that time, such as the BIND method, have been finished by their individual authors, independent of the formal working group.

As of 2013, many modern operating systems provide built-in client-side support for WebDAV.