WebDAV Protocol Compliance#

Overview#

The OpenDAL WebDAV integration (integrations/dav-server) implements the DavFileSystem trait from the dav-server crate via the OpendalFs struct, bridging any OpenDAL Operator backend to a standards-compliant WebDAV file system. Protocol compliance logic is concentrated in two files: fs.rs (request handling) and dir.rs (directory listing).

RFC 2518 MKCOL Compliance#

create_dir in fs.rs implements the two mandatory MKCOL constraints from RFC 2518 §8.3.1:

1. Parent Must Exist#

Before creating a directory, the implementation checks that the parent collection exists 1. The comment directly references the spec:

"During MKCOL processing, a server MUST make the Request-URI a member of its parent collection, unless the Request-URI is '/'. If no such ancestor exists, the method MUST fail."

The parent path is derived using Path::new(&path).parent(), then tested with op.exists(format!("{}/", parent.display())). If the parent does not exist (and is not the root /), the method returns FsError::NotFound 2.

2. Collection Must Not Already Exist#

After the parent check, the target path is checked for prior existence 3. If a resource already exists at that path, the method returns FsError::Exists — mapping to the 405 Method Not Allowed response mandated by RFC 2518 for MKCOL on an existing collection 4.

Path Normalization#

In Directory Listing#

OpendalStream::new normalizes the directory path with opendal::raw::normalize_path immediately on construction 5. The stream also skips the directory's own entry (where entry.path() == dav_stream.path) to avoid returning the directory itself when listing its contents.

normalize_path Internals#

The canonical implementation lives in core/src/raw/path.rs. Its normalization rules:

• Trims all surrounding whitespace 6
• Strips all leading / characters 7
• Collapses internal // sequences to / 8
• Returns / for empty paths 9
• Preserves trailing / to distinguish directory vs. file paths 10

Note: The whitespace-trimming behavior documented in the source is the current snapshot. PR #7451 proposed removing the .trim() call to preserve intentional spaces in filenames (e.g., "file " being incorrectly normalized to "file"). If your version of OpenDAL includes that fix, whitespace is preserved and only leading / is stripped.

Path Extraction in OpendalFs#

The fs_path helper converts a DavPath to a UTF-8 String. Path normalization at the dav-server layer is handled by DavPath itself before this conversion; normalize_path is applied in the streaming layer after the OpenDAL lister is created.

Other DavFileSystem Operations#

Key Source Files#