Setting up webDAV in OSX

You've tinkered a bit with Apache (or at least thought about it). You've heard about WebDAV. Now, you can set it up on your OSX box in minutes (tested with Jaguar version 10.2.2).

First, DAV is short for Distributed Authoring and Versioning. In simple terms, it allows multiple users to have write access to a shared folder, served by apache, and accesible thru the desktop environments of multiple platforms. It allows sharing of iCal calendars. It is the technology underlying dotMac. It allows for group/project collaboration. And it comes free and standard with OSX if you know how to enable it.

This page shows you how. I strongly recommend you have BBEdit installed on your system before proceeding. [Get BBEdit Lite]

I also suggest you run my script to set up aliases.mine before running this one.


If you have previously run the above script, but have upgraded OSX (eg. 10.2.4), run the following script to set things right. DO NOT USE THE SCRIPT BELOW IF YOU HAVE NOT RUN THE ABOVE SCRIPT PRIOR TO UPGRADING YOUR OSX INSTALLATION! IT WILL THROW ERRORS.
Copy and paste the above script into your Jaguar Script Editor, compile it, and run it. Follow the instructions. It's a multi-step process, but fairly straightforward. The script includes several display dialog commands, which allow you to watch, learn, and debug, and to stop the script if something seems awry. It is also helpful to open the Script Editor event log (before running the script!) and check "Show Event Results" to follow the progress of the script.

A note about aliases.mine
This script adds a line to your aliases.mine file which allows you to add webDAV users via the command line as follows:
dav newuser
You will need to exit your current shell and log in anew before this feature will take effect. More information about setting up aliases.mine can be found here.

Credits

My thanks to Shawn Wall who posted the first webDAV how-to I ever read (and on which this script is based).