WDIFF

draft-ietf-webdav-protocol-06.txt --> draft-ietf-webdav-protocol-07.txt

WEBDAV Working Group Y.Y. Goland, Microsoft
INTERNET DRAFT E.J. Whitehead, Jr., UC Irvine
<draft-ietf-webdav-protocol-06>
<draft-ietf-webdav-protocol-07> A. Faizi, Netscape
S.R. Carter, Novell
D. Jensen, Novell
Expires July, August, 1998 January 18, March 6, 1998

Extensions for Distributed Authoring on the World Wide Web -- WEBDAV

Status of this Memo

This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working
documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas,
and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six
months and may be updated, replaced, or made obsolete by other
documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as
reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress".

To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the
"1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow
Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe),
munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or
ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast).

Distribution of this document is unlimited. Please send comments to
the Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WEBDAV) working group at
<w3c-dist-auth@w3.org>, which may be joined by sending a message
with subject "subscribe" to <w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org>.

Discussions of the WEBDAV working group are archived at
<URL:http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth>.

Abstract

This document specifies a set of methods, headers, and content-types
ancillary to HTTP/1.1 for the management of resource properties,
creation and management of resource collections, namespace
manipulation, and resource locking (collision avoidance).

Changes

Changes since draft-ietf-webdav-protocol-06.txt

[Editor's note: This section will not appear in the final form of
this document. Its purpose is to provide a concise list of changes
from the previous revision of the draft for use by reviewers.]

Rationale for many of the changes made in this revision of the draft
can be found in the mailing list archives at:

Goland et al. [Page 1]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/1997OctDec/0160.ht
ml.

Where the 200 OK status code was used to indicate a successful
response without a response entity body, 204 No Content is now used.
Because PEP uses 420

Contents

STATUS OF THIS MEMO..................................................1
ABSTRACT.............................................................1
CONTENTS.............................................................2
1 INTRODUCTION.......................................................7
2 NOTATIONAL CONVENTIONS.............................................8
3 DATA MODEL FOR RESOURCE PROPERTIES.................................8
3.1 The Resource Property Model.....................................8
3.2 Existing Metadata Proposals.....................................9
3.3 Properties and 421 status codes, HTTP Headers....................................10
3.4 Property Values................................................10
3.5 Property Names.................................................10
3.6 Media Independent Links........................................11
4 COLLECTIONS OF WEB RESOURCES......................................11
4.1 Collection Resources...........................................11
4.2 Creation and since PEP has been
submitted as an Experimental RFC, the WebDAV 420 status code has
been changed to 422, Retrieval of Collection Resources.................12
4.3 HTTP URL Namespace Model.......................................12
4.4 Source Resources and Output Resources..........................12
5 LOCKING...........................................................13
5.1 Exclusive Vs. Shared Locks.....................................14
5.2 Required Support...............................................15
5.3 Lock Tokens....................................................15
5.4 opaquelocktoken Lock Token URI Scheme..........................15
5.5 Lock Capability Discovery......................................16
5.6 Active Lock Discovery..........................................16
5.7 Usage Considerations...........................................16
6 WRITE LOCK........................................................17
6.1 Methods Restricted by Write Locks..............................17
6.2 Write Locks and Properties.....................................18
6.3 Write Locks and Null Resources.................................18
6.4 Write Locks and Collections....................................18
6.5 Write Locks and the WebDAV 421 status code has been changed If Request Header..........................19
6.5.1Write Lock Example............................................19
6.6 Write Locks and COPY/MOVE......................................19
6.7 Refreshing Write Locks.........................................20
7 HTTP METHODS FOR DISTRIBUTED AUTHORING............................20
7.1 PROPFIND.......................................................21
7.1.1 Example: Retrieving Named Properties.........................22
7.1.2 Example: Using allprop to 423.

The 423 Destination Locked status code has been changed Retrieve All Properties............23
7.1.3 Example: Using propname to 423
Locked, and now covers Retrieve all cases where an operand was locked,
preventing the execution of the method.

Removed the Destroy header, since it is not needed in this draft,
but will be needed in the versioning draft.

The Enforce-Live-Properties header was renamed to Property-Behavior,
to more closely represent the meaning of the header now that the
"omit" functionality is included. A keepalive field was added to the
Property-Behavior header to make it more meaningful.

Removed the INDEX method, since the functionality of INDEX can now
be performed by the PROPFIND method. PROPFIND provides more
flexibility in specifying the type and amount of property
information returned than does INDEX, which is important Property Names.......26
7.2 PROPPATCH......................................................27
7.2.1 Status Codes for
returning information on a large number of resources.

Clarified that performing a MOVE as a COPY, then DELETE, performed
atomically, only applies to non-collection resources.

Clarified the semantics of errors that are encountered in infinite
depth move and copy of a hierarchy of resources. For errors copying
internal nodes of the hierarchy tree (i.e., collections), the
operation skips that subtree, and moves on to the next subtree. If
an error is encountered moving/copying a leaf of the tree, then skip
that resource, and move on to the next leaf.

Removed the PATCH method. This will be resubmitted as the document
draft-ietf-webdav-patch-00.

Added language that states that if a PROPPATCH is invoked on a null
resource (e.g., a deleted resource), an empty resource is created,
and the PROPPATCH directives are performed on this new resource.

Added a forward reference to the source link definition (Section
13.11) in Section 4.4.

Changed all Values= to Values:. Also changed all "values" to
"value". use with Multi-Status.......................28
7.2.2 Example......................................................28
7.3 MKCOL Method...................................................29
7.3.1 Request......................................................29

Goland et al. [Page 2]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

References to state tokens are now restricted to sections 9.7

7.3.2 Response Codes...............................................30
7.3.3 Example......................................................30
7.4 GET, HEAD for Collections......................................31
7.5 POST for Collections...........................................31
7.6 DELETE.........................................................31
7.6.1 DELETE for Non-Collection Resources..........................31
7.6.2 DELETE for Collections.......................................31
7.7 PUT............................................................32
7.7.1 PUT for Non-Collection Resources.............................32
7.7.2 PUT for Collections..........................................33
7.8 COPY Method....................................................33
7.8.1 COPY for HTTP/1.1 resources..................................33
7.8.2 COPY for Properties..........................................34
7.8.3 COPY for Collections.........................................34
7.8.4 COPY and
9.8.

The property-behavior header has been turned into the
propertybehavior XML element because it contained a list of URIs
which can thus have unbounded size. The lock-info header has been
turned into the lockinfo XML element for the same reason. I have
also made the same change of the Propfind header into the Propfind
XML element. We can put the property behavior header into the body
because neither COPY nor MOVE have bodies. However we can't put
lock-token, if-state-match, etc. in the body because they may need
to be used with PUT. However I don't consider this a big deal
because I sincerely doubt that there will be cases where lock-token
or if-state-match will see large numbers of entries.

Also changed omit to mean "copy properties with best effort but
failure is acceptable."

Added the external members property.

Added language to 6.4 making it clear that any new resources created
as the child of a write locked collection is added to the lock.

Made the lock-token response header from a single URL to multiple
URLs. But all the URLs MUST refer to the exact same lock.

<?XML version="1.0"> changed to the correct form: <?xml
version="1.0"?>

Changed the delete rule for collections to read that if a delete in
a collection member fails then it is the ancestors, not the progeny,
who can not be deleted in order to maintain the namespace.

Updated our reference to the XML spec.

Added LOCK and UNLOCK to the list of methods covered by the write
lock. This is necessary so that a lock-token will have to be
submitted in order to make changes, otherwise we defeat the whole
purpose of requiring the lock-token.

Changed the title of section 6.6 from Re-Issuing Write Locks to
Refreshing Write Locks, made it illegal to make the same lock
request twice (you know you are making the same request because you
had to include the lock-token to make it!) and instead made it legal
to submit a LOCK method with no body but with a lock-token header.
I also added a refresh example.

Put in a note that an empty request body for PROPFIND means to
return all names and values of properties on the resources.

Goland et al. [Page 3]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

I have added a section on XML processing errors. I know, I know, it
shouldn't be in the standard. I will move it to our compliance draft
as soon as we prepare the first version.

Removed addlocks and replaced with the depth header and the depth
element.

Changed all the as in namespace elements to all lower case.

Moved all XML element declarations to the same section. Removed the
parent description.

Updated the depth section to make it more generic, changed the
wording for how COPY/MOVE are handled with write locks, require that
ALL propfind responses include href, require that if a property is
not found in a propfind then a 404 Not Found must be returned, and
made explicit that PROPFIND responses on resources with internal
members are returned as a flat list with no significance to its
ordering.

Removed reference to efficient update in the introduction since
PATCH is now gone.

Rewrote the write lock and null resource section to deal with the
question of the state of the resource when it is locked and null.

Changed www.ietf.org to www.iana.org.

Changed the response element and added the new propstat element.
With the prohibition that an HREF can only appear once in a
multistatus response we can guarantee linear processing costs.

Added Intellectual Property section, as required by RFC 2026.

Added IANA Considerations section.

Added Authorization headers to LOCK and UNLOCK examples.

Changed lock tokens in examples to use string format of UUID.

Since the latest HTTP revision defines a 418 and 419 status code,
the 418 status code has been changed to 422, 419 to 423, 422 to 424,
and 423 to 425.

Changed implementation of the get* (e.g., getcontentlength)
properties to strength MUST.

Changed definition of XML elements and DAV properties to use XML
element definitions, rather than BNF.

Renumbered all sections

Goland et al. [Page 4]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

Contents

STATUS OF THIS MEMO..................................................1
ABSTRACT.............................................................1
CHANGES..............................................................1
Changes since draft-ietf-webdav-protocol-06.txt......................1
CONTENTS.............................................................5
1 INTRODUCTION.......................................................9
2 DATA MODEL FOR RESOURCE PROPERTIES................................10
2.1 The Resource Property Model....................................10
2.2 Existing Metadata Proposals....................................10
2.3 Properties and HTTP Headers....................................11
2.4 Property Values................................................11
2.5 Property Names.................................................12
3 COLLECTIONS OF WEB RESOURCES......................................12
3.1 Collection Resources...........................................12
3.2 Creation and Retrieval of Collection Resources.................13
3.3 HTTP URL Namespace Model.......................................13
3.4 Source Resources and Output Resources..........................14
4 LOCKING...........................................................15
4.1 Exclusive Vs. Shared Locks.....................................15
4.2 Required Support...............................................16
4.3 Lock Tokens....................................................16
4.4 opaquelocktoken Lock Token URI Scheme..........................17
4.5 Lock Capability Discovery......................................17
4.6 Active Lock Discovery..........................................18
5 WRITE LOCK........................................................18
5.1 Methods Restricted by Write Locks..............................18
5.2 Write Locks and Properties.....................................18
5.3 Write Locks and Null Resources.................................18
5.4 Write Locks and Collections....................................19
5.5 Write Locks and COPY/MOVE......................................19
5.6 Refreshing Write Locks.........................................19
5.7 Write Locks and The Lock-Token Request Header..................20
5.7.1 Write Lock Token Example...................................20
6 NOTATIONAL CONVENTIONS............................................21
7 HTTP METHODS FOR DISTRIBUTED AUTHORING............................21
7.1 PROPFIND.......................................................21
7.1.1 Example: Retrieving Named Properties.......................22
7.1.2 Example: Using allprop to Retrieve All Properties..........23
7.1.3 Example: Using propname to Retrieve all Property Names.....26
7.2 PROPPATCH......................................................28
7.2.1 Status Codes...............................................28
7.2.2 Example....................................................28
7.3 MKCOL Method...................................................30
7.3.1 Request....................................................30

Goland et al. [Page 5]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

7.3.2 Response Codes.............................................30
7.3.3 Example....................................................31
7.4 ADDREF Method..................................................31
7.4.1 The Request................................................31
7.4.2 Example....................................................31
7.5 DELREF Method..................................................32
7.5.1 The Request................................................32
7.5.2 Example....................................................32
7.6 GET, HEAD for Collections......................................32
7.7 POST for Collections...........................................33
7.8 DELETE.........................................................33
7.8.1 DELETE for Non-Collection Resources........................33
7.8.2 DELETE for Collections.....................................33
7.9 PUT............................................................34
7.9.1 PUT for Non-Collection Resources...........................34
7.9.2 PUT for Collections........................................35
7.10 COPY Method....................................................35
7.10.1 COPY for HTTP/1.1 resources................................35
7.10.2 COPY for Properties........................................35
7.10.3 COPY for Collections.......................................36
7.10.4 Type Interactions..........................................37
7.10.5 Overwrite Header................................35
7.8.5 Status Codes...............................................37
7.10.6 Codes.................................................35
7.8.6 Overwrite Example..........................................38
7.10.7 Example............................................35
7.8.7 No Overwrite Example.......................................38
7.10.8 Example.........................................36
7.8.8 Collection Example.........................................38
7.11 Example...........................................36
7.9 MOVE Method....................................................39
7.11.1 Method....................................................37
7.9.1 MOVE for Properties..........................................37
7.9.2 MOVE for Collections.......................................40
7.11.2 Collections.........................................38
7.9.3 MOVE and the Overwrite Header................................38
7.9.4 Status Codes...............................................40
7.11.3 Codes.................................................39
7.9.5 Non-Collection Example.....................................41
7.11.4 Example.......................................39
7.9.6 Collection Example.........................................41
7.12 Example...........................................39
7.10 LOCK Method....................................................42
7.12.1 Operation..................................................43
7.12.2 Method....................................................40
7.10.1 Operation...................................................40
7.10.2 The Effect of Locks on Properties and Collections..........43
7.12.3 Collections...........41
7.10.3 Locking Replicated Resources...............................43
7.12.4 Resources................................41
7.10.4 Depth and Locking..........................................43
7.12.5 Locking...........................................41
7.10.5 Interaction with other Methods.............................44
7.12.6 Methods..............................42
7.10.6 Lock Compatibility Table...................................44
7.12.7 Lock Response..............................................44
7.12.8 Table....................................42
7.10.7 Status Codes...............................................44
7.12.9 Codes................................................42
7.10.8 Example - Simple Lock Request..............................45
7.12.10 Request...............................43
7.10.9 Example - Refreshing a Write Lock.........................46
7.12.11 Lock...........................44
7.10.10 Example - Multi-Resource Lock Request.....................47
7.13 Request......................45
7.11 UNLOCK Method..................................................48
7.13.1 Example....................................................48 Method..................................................46
7.11.1 Example.....................................................46
8 HTTP HEADERS FOR DISTRIBUTED AUTHORING............................49

Goland et al. [Page 6]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998 AUTHORING............................47
8.1 Collection-Member Header.......................................49
8.2 DAV Header.....................................................49
8.3 Header.....................................................47
8.2 Depth Header...................................................49
8.4 Header...................................................47
8.3 Destination Header.............................................50 Header.............................................48
8.4 If Header......................................................48
8.4.1 No-tag-list Production.......................................49

Goland et al. [Page 3]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

8.4.2 Tagged-list Production.......................................49
8.4.3 not Production...............................................50
8.4.4 Matching Function............................................50
8.4.5 If Header and Non-DAV Compliant Proxies......................50
8.5 If-None-State-Match............................................50
8.6 If-State-Match.................................................51
8.7 Lock-Token Request Header......................................51
8.8 Lock-Token Response Header.....................................52
8.9
8.6 Overwrite Header...............................................53
8.10 Header...............................................51
8.7 Status-URI Response Header.....................................53
8.11 Header.....................................51
8.8 Timeout Header.................................................53 Request Header.........................................52
9 STATUS CODE EXTENSIONS TO HTTP/1.1................................54 HTTP/1.1................................53
9.1 102 Processing.................................................54 Processing.................................................53
9.2 207 Multi-Status...............................................55 Multi-Status...............................................53
9.3 422 Unprocessable Entity.......................................55 Entity.......................................53
9.4 423 Insufficient Space on Resource.............................55 Locked.....................................................53
9.5 424 Method Failure.............................................55 Failure.............................................53
9.6 425 Locked.....................................................55 Insufficient Space on Resource.............................53
10 MULTI-STATUS RESPONSE...........................................55 RESPONSE............................................53
11 XML ELEMENT DEFINITIONS.........................................55 DEFINITIONS..........................................54
11.1 activelock XML Element.........................................56 Element.........................................54
11.1.1 depth XML Element..........................................56 Element...........................................54
11.1.2 locktoken XML Element......................................56 Element.......................................54
11.1.3 timeout XML Element........................................56 Element.........................................54
11.2 collection XML Element.........................................56 Element.........................................55
11.3 href XML Element...............................................56 Element...............................................55
11.4 link XML Element...............................................57 Element...............................................55
11.4.1 dst XML Element............................................57 Element.............................................55
11.4.2 src XML Element............................................57 Element.............................................55
11.5 lockentry XML Element..........................................57 Element..........................................56
11.6 lockinfo XML Element...........................................57 Element...........................................56
11.7 lockscope XML Element..........................................58 Element..........................................56
11.7.1 exclusive XML Element......................................58 Element.......................................56
11.7.2 shared XML Element.........................................58 Element..........................................56
11.8 locktype XML Element...........................................58 Element...........................................56
11.8.1 write XML Element..........................................58 Element...........................................57
11.9 multistatus XML Element........................................58 Element........................................57
11.9.1 response XML Element.......................................59 Element........................................57
11.9.2 responsedescription XML Element............................59 Element.............................58
11.10 owner XML Element.............................................60 Element.............................................58
11.11 prop XML element..............................................60 element..............................................58
11.12 propertybehavior XML element..................................60 element..................................58
11.12.1 keepalive XML element.....................................60 element......................................59
11.12.2 omit XML element..........................................61 element...........................................59
11.13 propertyupdate XML element....................................61

Goland et al. [Page 7]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998 element....................................59
11.13.1 remove XML element........................................61 element.........................................60
11.13.2 set XML element...........................................62 element............................................60
11.14 propfind XML Element..........................................62 Element..........................................60

Goland et al. [Page 4]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

11.14.1 allprop XML Element.......................................62 Element........................................60
11.14.2 propname XML Element......................................62 Element.......................................61
12 DAV PROPERTIES..................................................62 PROPERTIES...................................................61
12.1 creationdate Property..........................................63 Property..........................................61
12.2 displayname Property...........................................63 Property...........................................61
12.3 externalmembers Property.......................................63
12.4 getcontentlanguage Property....................................63
12.5 Property....................................61
12.4 getcontentlength Property......................................64
12.6 Property......................................62
12.5 getcontenttype Property........................................64
12.7 Property........................................62
12.6 getetag Property...............................................64
12.8 Property...............................................62
12.7 getlastmodified Property.......................................64
12.9 Property.......................................63
12.8 lockdiscovery Property.........................................65
12.9.1 Example....................................................65
12.10 Property.........................................63
12.8.1 Example.....................................................63
12.9 resourcetype Property.........................................66
12.11 Property..........................................64
12.10 source Property...............................................66
12.11.1 Example...................................................67
12.12 Property...............................................64
12.10.1 Example....................................................65
12.11 supportedlock Property........................................67
12.12.1 Example...................................................68 Property........................................66
12.11.1 Example....................................................66
13 DAV XML PROCESSING INSTRUCTIONS..................................67
14 DAV COMPLIANCE CLASSES..........................................68
13.1 CLASSES...........................................67
14.1 Class 1........................................................69
13.2 1........................................................67
14.2 Class 2........................................................69
14 INTERNATIONALIZATION CONSIDERATIONS.............................69 2........................................................68
15 INTERNATIONALIZATION CONSIDERATIONS..............................68
16 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS.........................................70
15.1 CONSIDERATIONS..........................................69
16.1 Authentication of Clients......................................71
15.2 Clients......................................69
16.2 Denial of Service..............................................71
15.3 Service..............................................70
16.3 Security through Obscurity.....................................72
15.4 Obscurity.....................................70
16.4 Privacy Issues Connected to Locks..............................72
15.5 Locks..............................70
16.5 Privacy Issues Connected to Properties.........................72
15.6 Properties.........................70
16.6 Reduction of Security due to Source Link.......................72
16 IANA CONSIDERATIONS.............................................73 Link.......................71
17 TERMINOLOGY.....................................................73 IANA CONSIDERATIONS..............................................71
18 COPYRIGHT.......................................................74 TERMINOLOGY......................................................72
19 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY...........................................74 COPYRIGHT........................................................72
20 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................75 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY............................................73
21 REFERENCES......................................................76 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................73
22 AUTHORS' ADDRESSES..............................................78 REFERENCES.......................................................75
23 APPENDICES......................................................79
23.1 AUTHORS' ADDRESSES...............................................77
24 APPENDICES.......................................................78
24.1 Appendix 1 - WebDAV Document Type Definition...................79
23.2 Definition...................78
24.2 Appendix 2 - ISO 8601 Date and Time Profile....................80
23.3 Profile....................79
24.3 Appendix 3 - Notes on Processing XML Elements..................81
23.3.1 Elements..................80
24.3.1 XML Syntax Error Example...................................81
23.3.2 Example....................................80
24.3.2 Unknown XML Element Example................................81 Example.................................81
24.4 Appendix 4 -- XML Namespaces for WebDAV........................82
24.4.1 Introduction................................................82
24.4.2 Namespace Declaration PI....................................83

Goland et al. [Page 8] 5]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

24.4.3 Prolog with Namespace Declarations..........................83
24.4.4 Well-Formedness Constraint - Unique Namespace Names.........83
24.4.5 Qualified Names.............................................83
24.4.6 Well-Formedness Constraint - Namespace Name Declared........83
24.4.7 Using Qualified Names.......................................84
24.4.8 Element Names...............................................84
24.4.9 Scope and Meaning of Qualified Names........................84

Goland et al. [Page 6]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

1 Introduction

This document describes an extension to the HTTP/1.1 protocol that
allows clients to perform remote web content authoring operations.
This extension provides a coherent set of methods, headers, request
entity body formats, and response entity body formats that provide
operations for:

Properties: The ability to create, remove, and query information
about Web pages, such as their authors, creation dates, etc. Also,
the ability to link pages of any media type to related pages.

Collections: The ability to create sets of related documents, documents and to
receive
retrieve a hierarchical membership listing of pages at a particular hierarchy level (like a directory listing
in a file system).

Locking: The ability to keep more than one person from working on a
document at the same time. This prevents the "lost update problem,"
in which modifications are lost as first one author, author then another
writes changes without merging the other author's changes changes.

Namespace Operations: The ability to instruct the server to copy and
move Web resources resources.

Requirements and rationale for these operations are described in a
companion document, "Requirements for a Distributed Authoring and
Versioning Protocol for the World Wide Web" [Slein et al., 1997]. 1998].

The sections below provide a detailed introduction to resource
properties (Section 2), (section 3), collections of resources (Section 3), (section 4), and
locking operations (Section 4). (section 5). These sections introduce the
abstractions manipulated by the WebDAV-specific HTTP methods
described in Section section 7, "HTTP Methods for Distributed Authoring".

In HTTP/1.1, method parameter information was exclusively encoded in
HTTP headers. Unlike HTTP/1.1, WebDAV, encodes method parameter
information either in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) [Bray,
Paoli, Sperberg-McQueen, 1998] request entity body, or in an HTTP
header. The use of XML to encode method parameters was motivated by
the ability to add extra XML elements to existing structures,
providing extensibility, and by XML's ability to encode information
in ISO 10646 character sets, providing internationalization support.
As a rule of thumb, parameters are encoded in XML entity bodies when
they have unbounded length, or when they may be shown to a human
user and hence require encoding in an ISO 10646 character set.
Otherwise, parameters are encoded within HTTP headers. Section 8
describes the new HTTP headers used with WebDAV methods.

In addition to encoding method parameters, XML is used in WebDAV to
encode the responses from methods, providing the extensibility and

Goland et al. [Page 7]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

internationalization advantages of XML for method output, as well as

Goland et al. [Page 9]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
input.

XML elements used in this specification are defined in
Section section 11.

The XML namespace extension (Appendix 4) is also used in this
specification in order to allow for new XML elements to be added
without fear of colliding with other element names.

While the status codes provided by HTTP/1.1 are sufficient to
describe most error conditions encountered by WebDAV methods, there
are some errors that do not fall neatly into the existing
categories. New status codes developed for the WebDAV methods are
defined in Section section 9. Since some WebDAV methods may operate over
many resources, the Multi-Status status type response has been introduced to
return status information for multiple resources. The Multi-Status
response is described in Section section 10.

WebDAV employs the property mechanism to store information about the
current state of the resource. For example, when a lock is taken
out on a resource, a lock information property describes the current
state of the lock. Section 12 defines the properties used within the
WebDAV specification.

Finishing off the specification are sections on what it means specification are sections on what it means to be
compliant with this specification (section 14), on
internationalization support (section 15), and on security (section
16).

2 Notational Conventions

Since this document describes a set of extensions to the HTTP/1.1
protocol, the augmented BNF used herein to describe protocol
elements is exactly the same as described in section 2.1 of
[Fielding et al., 1997]. Since this augmented BNF uses the basic
production rules provided in section 2.2 of [Fielding et al., 1997],
these rules apply to be
compliant with this specification (Section 13), on
internationalization support (Section 14), document as well.

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and on security (Section
15).

2 "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [Bradner,
1997].

3 Data Model for Resource Properties

2.1

3.1 The Resource Property Model

Properties are pieces of data that describe the state of a resource.
Properties are data about data.

Properties are used in distributed authoring environments to provide
for efficient discovery and management of resources. For example, a

Goland et al. [Page 8]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

'subject' property might allow for the indexing of all resources by
their subject, and an 'author' property might allow for the
discovery of what authors have written which documents.

The DAV property model consists of name/value pairs. The name of a
property identifies the property's syntax and semantics, and
provides an address by which to refer to that its syntax and semantics.

There are two categories of properties: "live" and "dead". A live
property has its syntax and semantics enforced by the server. Live
properties include cases where a) the value of a property is read-
only, maintained by the server, and b) the value of the property is
maintained by the client, but the server performs syntax checking on
submitted values. A dead property has its syntax and semantics
enforced by the client; the server merely records the value of the
property verbatim.

2.2

3.2 Existing Metadata Proposals

Goland et al. [Page 10]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

Properties have long played an essential role in the maintenance of
large document repositories, and many current proposals contain some
notion of a property, or discuss web metadata more generally. These
include PICS [Miller et al., 1996], PICS-NG, XML [Bray, Paoli,
Sperberg-McQueen, 1998], XML, Web Collections,
and several proposals on representing relationships within HTML.
Work on PICS-NG and Web Collections has been subsumed by the
Resource Definition Framework (RDF) metadata activity of the World
Wide Web Consortium. RDF consists of a network-based data model and
an XML representation of that model.

Some proposals come from a digital library perspective. These
include the Dublin Core [Weibel et al., 1995] metadata set and the
Warwick Framework [Lagoze, 1996], a container architecture for
different metadata schemas. The literature includes many examples
of metadata, including MARC [MARC, 1994], a bibliographic metadata
format, and RFC 1807 [Lasher, Cohen, 1995], a technical report
bibliographic format employed by the Dienst system. Additionally,
the proceedings from the first IEEE Metadata conference describe
many community-specific metadata sets.

Participants of the 1996 Metadata II Workshop in Warwick, UK
[Lagoze, 1996], noted that "new metadata sets will develop as the
networked infrastructure matures" and "different communities will
propose, design, and be responsible for different types of
metadata." These observations can be corroborated by noting that
many community-specific sets of metadata already exist, and there is
significant motivation for the development of new forms of metadata

as many communities increasingly make their data available in
digital form, requiring a metadata format to assist data location
and cataloging.

2.3

Goland et al. [Page 9]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

3.3 Properties and HTTP Headers

Properties already exist, in a limited sense, in HTTP message
headers. However, in distributed authoring environments a
relatively large number of properties are needed to describe the
state of a resource, and setting/returning them all through HTTP
headers is inefficient. Thus a mechanism is needed which allows a
principal to identify a set of properties in which the principal is
interested and to set or retrieve just those properties.

2.4

3.4 Property Values

The value of a property is expressed as a well-formed XML document. is, at minimum, well formed XML.

XML has been chosen because it is a flexible, self-describing,
structured data format that supports rich schema definitions, and
because of its support for multiple character sets. XML's self-
describing nature allows any property's value to be extended by
adding new elements. Older clients will not break when they
encounter extensions because they will still have the data specified

Goland et al. [Page 11]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
in the original schema and will ignore elements they do not
understand. XML's support for multiple character sets allows any
human-readable property to be encoded and read in a character set
familiar to the user.

2.5

3.5 Property Names

A property name is a universally unique identifier that is
associated with a schema that provides information about the syntax
and semantics of the property.

Because a property's name is universally unique, clients can depend
upon consistent behavior for a particular property across multiple
resources, so long as that property is "live" on the resources in
question.

The XML namespace mechanism, which is based on URIs, is used to name
properties because it prevents namespace collisions and provides for
varying degrees of administrative control.

The property namespace is flat; that is, no hierarchy of properties
is explicitly recognized. Thus, if a property A and a property A/B
exist on a resource, there is no recognition of any relationship
between the two properties. It is expected that a separate
specification will eventually be produced which will address issues
relating to hierarchical properties.

Finally, it is not possible to define the same property twice on a
single resource, as this would cause a collision in the resource's
property namespace.

Goland et al. [Page 10]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

3.6 Media Independent Links

Although HTML resources support links to other resources, the Web
needs more general support for links between resources of any media
type. WebDAV provides such links. A WebDAV link is a special type
of property value, formally defined in section 11.4, that allows
typed connections to be established between resources of any media
type. The property value consists of source and destination Uniform
Resource Locators (URLs); the property name identifies the link
type.

4 Collections of Web Resources

This section provides a description of a new type of Web resource,
the collection, and discusses its interactions with the HTTP Uniform
Resource Locator (URL) URL
namespace. The purpose of a collection resource is to model
collection-like objects (e.g., filesystem file system directories) within a
server's namespace.

All DAV compliant resources MUST support the HTTP URL namespace
model specified herein.

3.1

4.1 Collection Resources

A collection is a resource whose state consists of an unordered list
of internal members, an unordered list of external members, members and a set of properties. An internal member
resource MUST have a URI that is immediately relative to the base
URI of the collection. That is, the internal member's URI is equal
to the parent collection's URI plus an additional segment where
segment is defined in Section section 3.2.1 of RFC 2068 [Fielding et al.,
1996].

Goland et al. [Page 12]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

An external member resource is a resource that could not be an
internal member resource.

Any given internal or external Member member MUST only belong to the collection once,
i.e., it is illegal to have multiple instances of the same URI in a
collection. Properties defined on collections behave exactly as do
properties on non-
collection non-collection resources.

WebDAV servers MUST treat HTTP URL namespaces as collections,
regardless of whether they were created with the MKCOL method
described in section 7.3.

There is a standing convention that when a collection is referred to
by its name without a trailing slash, the trailing slash is
automatically appended. Due to this, a resource MAY may accept a URI
without a trailing "/" to point to a collection. In this case it
SHOULD return a location header in the response pointing to the URL
ending with the "/". For example, if a client invokes a method on
http://foo.bar/blah (no trailing slash), the resource
http://foo.bar/blah/ (trailing slash) MAY may respond as if the
operation were invoked on it, and SHOULD should return a location header
with http://foo.bar/blah/ in it. In general clients SHOULD use the
"/" form of collection names.

3.2

Goland et al. [Page 11]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

4.2 Creation and Retrieval of Collection Resources

This document specifies the MKCOL method to create new collection
resources, rather than using the existing HTTP/1.1 PUT or POST
method, for the following reasons reasons:

In HTTP/1.1, the PUT method is defined to store the request body at
the location specified by the Request-URI. While a description
format for a collection can readily be constructed for use with PUT,
the implications of sending such a description to the server are
undesirable. For example, if a description of a collection that
omitted some existing resources were PUT to a server, this might be
interpreted as a command to remove those members. This would extend
PUT to perform DELETE functionality, which is undesirable since it
changes the semantics of PUT, and makes it difficult to control
DELETE functionality with an access control scheme based on methods.

While the POST method is sufficiently open-ended that a "create a
collection" POST command could be constructed, this is undesirable
because it would be difficult to separate access control for
collection creation from other uses of POST.

The exact definition of the behavior of GET and PUT on collections
is defined later in this document.

3.3

4.3 HTTP URL Namespace Model

The HTTP URL Namespace is a hierarchical namespace where the
hierarchy is delimited with the "/" character. DAV compliant
resources MUST maintain the consistency of the HTTP URL namespace.
Any attempt to create a resource (excepting the root member of a
namespace) that would not be the internal member of a collection

Goland et al. [Page 13]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

MUST fail.
For example, if the collection http://www.foo.bar.org/a/ exists, but http://www.foo.bar.org/a/b/does
http://www.foo.bar.org/a/b/ does not exist, an attempt to create
http://www.foo.bar.org/a/b/c must fail.

3.4

4.4 Source Resources and Output Resources

For many resources, the entity returned by a GET method exactly
matches the persistent state of the resource, for example, a GIF
file stored on a disk. For this simple case, the URL at which a
resource is accessed is identical to the URL at which the source
(the persistent state) of the resource is accessed. This is also
the case for HTML source files that are not processed by the server
prior to transmission.

However, the server can sometimes process HTML resources before they
are transmitted as a return entity body. For example, server-side-
include directives a server-
side-include directive within an HTML file might instruct a server
to replace the directive with another value, such as the current
date. In this case, what is returned by GET (HTML plus date)
differs from the persistent state of the resource (HTML plus

Goland et al. [Page 12]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

directive). Typically there is no way to access the HTML resource
containing the unprocessed directive.

Sometimes the entity returned by GET is the output of a data-
producing process that is described by one or more source resources
(that may not even have a location in the URL namespace). A single
data-producing process may dynamically generate the state of a
potentially large number of output resources. An example of this is
a CGI script that describes a "finger" gateway process that maps
part of the namespace of a server into finger requests, such as
http://www.foo.bar.org/finger_gateway/user@host.

In the absence of distributed authoring capabilities, it is
acceptable to have no mapping of source resource(s) to the URI
namespace. In fact, preventing access to the source resource(s) has
desirable security benefits. However, if remote editing of the
source resource(s) is desired, the source resource(s) should be
given a location in the URI namespace. This source location should
not be one of the locations at which the generated output is
retrievable, since in general it is impossible for the server to
differentiate requests for source resources from requests for
process output resources. There is often a many-to-many
relationship between source resources and output resources.

On WebDAV compliant servers, for all output resources which have a
single source resource (and that source resource has a URI), the URI
of the source resource SHOULD may be stored in a link on the output
resource with type http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/source DAV:source (see
Section 12.11 section 12.10 for a description
of the source link). Note that by
storing link property). Storing the source URIs in links on
the output resources, resources places the burden of discovering the source is placed on
the authoring client.

Goland et al. [Page 14]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

4 Note that the value of a source link is not
guaranteed to point to the correct source. Source links may break
or incorrect values may be entered. Also note that not all servers
will allow the client to set the source link value. For example a
server which generates source links on the fly for its CGI files
will most likely not allow a client to set the source link value.

5 Locking

The ability to lock a resource provides a mechanism for serializing
access to that resource. Using a lock, an authoring client can
provide a reasonable guarantee that another principal will not
modify a resource while it is being edited. In this way, a client
can prevent the "lost update" problem.

This specification allows locks to vary over two client-specified
parameters, the number of principals involved (exclusive vs. shared)
and the type of access to be granted. This document defines locking
for only one access type, write. However, the syntax is extensible,
and permits the eventual specification of locking for other access
types.

4.1

Goland et al. [Page 13]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

5.1 Exclusive Vs. Shared Locks

The most basic form of lock is an exclusive lock. This is a lock
where the access right in question is only granted to a single
principal. The need for this arbitration results from a desire to
avoid having to constantly merge results.

However, there are times when the goal of a lock is not to exclude
others from exercising an access right but rather to provide a
mechanism for principals to indicate that they intend to exercise
their access right. rights. Shared locks are provided for this case. A
shared lock allows multiple principals to receive a lock. Hence any
principal with appropriate access can get the lock.

With shared locks there are two trust sets that affect a resource.
The first trust set is created by access permissions. Principals
who are trusted, for example, may have permission to write to the
resource. Those who are not, don't. Among those who have access permission to write to the
resource, the set of principals who have taken out a shared lock
also must trust each other, creating a (typically) smaller trust set
within the access permission write set.

Starting with every possible principal on the Internet, in most
situations the vast majority of these principals will not have write
access to a given resource. Of the small number who do have write
access, some principals may decide to guarantee their edits are free
from overwrite conflicts by using exclusive write locks. Others may
decide they trust their collaborators will not overwrite their work
(the potential set of collaborators being the set of principals who
have write permission) and use a shared lock, which informs their
collaborators that a principal may be working on the resource.

The WebDAV extensions to HTTP do not need to provide all of the
communications paths necessary for principals to coordinate their
activities. When using shared locks, principals may use any out of

Goland et al. [Page 15]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
band communication channel to coordinate their work (e.g., face-to-
face interaction, written notes, post-it notes on the screen,
telephone conversation, Email, etc.) The intent of a shared lock is
to let collaborators know who else may be working on a resource.

Shared locks are included because experience from web distributed
authoring systems has indicated that exclusive write locks are often too
rigid. An exclusive write lock is used to enforce a particular editing
process: take out an exclusive write lock, read the resource, perform
edits, write the resource, release the lock. This editing process
has the problem that locks are not always properly released, for
example when a program crashes, or when a lock owner leaves without
unlocking a resource. While both timeouts and administrative action
can be used to remove an offending lock, neither mechanism may be
available when needed; the timeout may be long or the administrator
may not be available.

Despite their potential problems, exclusive write locks are
extremely useful, since often a guarantee of freedom from overwrite
conflicts is what is needed. This specification provides both
exclusive write locks and the less strict mechanism of shared locks.

4.2

Goland et al. [Page 14]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

5.2 Required Support

A WebDAV compliant server is not required to support locking in any
form. If the server does support locking it MAY may choose to support
any combination of exclusive and shared locks for any access types.

The reason for this flexibility is that locking policy strikes to
the very heart of the resource management and versioning systems
employed by various storage repositories. These repositories
require control over what sort of locking will be made available.
For example, some repositories only support shared write locks while
others only provide support for exclusive write locks while yet
others use no locking at all. As each system is sufficiently
different to merit exclusion of certain locking features, this
specification leaves locking as the sole axis of negotiation within
WebDAV.

4.3

5.3 Lock Tokens

A lock token is a URI that type of state token, represented as a URI, which
identifies a particular lock. A lock token is returned by every
successful LOCK operation in the Lock-
Token Lock-Token response header, and can
also be discovered through lock discovery on a resource.

Lock token URIs are required to URIs MUST be unique across all resources for all time.
This uniqueness constraint allows lock tokens to be submitted across
resources and servers without fear of confusion.

This specification provides a lock token URI scheme called
opaquelocktoken that meets the uniqueness requirements. However

Goland et al. [Page 16]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
resources are free to return any URI scheme so long as it meets the
uniqueness requirements.

4.4

Having a lock token provides no special access rights. Anyone can
find out anyone else's lock token by performing lock discovery.
Locks MUST be enforced based upon whatever authentication mechanism
is used by the server, not based on the secrecy of the token values.

5.4 opaquelocktoken Lock Token URI Scheme

The opaquelocktoken URI scheme is designed to be unique across all
resources for all time. Due to this uniqueness quality, a client
MAY
may submit an opaque lock token in a Lock-Token request header and an If-[None]-State-Match If header on a resource other
than the one that returned it.

All resources MUST recognize the opaquelocktoken scheme and, at
minimum, recognize that the lock token was does not generated by refer to an
outstanding lock on the resource. Note, however, that resources are not required to
generate opaquelocktokens in LOCK method responses.

In order to guarantee uniqueness across all resources for all time
the opaquelocktoken requires the use of the Universally Unique

Goland et al. [Page 15]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

Identifier (UUID, also known as a Globally Unique Identifier, or
GUID) mechanism, as described in [Leach, Salz, 1998].

Opaquelocktoken generators, however, have a choice of how they
create these tokens. They can either generate a new UUID for every
lock token they create, which is potentially very expensive, create or they can create a single UUID and then add
extension characters. If the second method is selected then the
program generating the extensions MUST guarantee that the same
extension will never be used twice with the associated UUID.

OpaqueLockToken-URI = "opaquelocktoken:" UUID [Extension] ; The
UUID production is the string form of a UUID, as defined in [Leach,
Salz, 1998]. Note that white space (LWS) is not allowed between
elements of this production.

Extension = path ; path is defined in Section section 3.2.1 of RFC 2068
[Fielding et al., 1996]

4.5

5.5 Lock Capability Discovery

Since server lock support is optional, a client trying to lock a
resource on a server can either try the lock and hope for the best,
or perform some form of discovery to determine what lock
capabilities the server supports. This is known as lock capability
discovery. Lock capability discovery differs from discovery of
supported access control types, since there may be access control
types without corresponding lock types. A client can determine what
lock types the server supports by retrieving the supportedlock
property.

Any DAV compliant resource that supports the LOCK method MUST
support the supportedlock property.

Goland et al. [Page 17]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

4.6

5.6 Active Lock Discovery

If another principal locks a resource that a principal wishes to
access, it is useful for the second principal second principal to be able to find out
who the first principal is. For this purpose the lockdiscovery
property is provided. This property lists all outstanding locks,
describes their type, and where available, provides their lock
token.

Any DAV compliant resource that supports the LOCK method MUST
support the lockdiscovery property.

5.7 Usage Considerations

Although the locking mechanisms specified here provide some help in
preventing lost updates, they cannot guarantee that updates will
never be lost. Consider the following scenario:

Goland et al. [Page 16]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

Two clients A and B are interested in editing the resource
'index.html'. Client A is an HTTP client rather than a WebDAV
client, and so does not know how to perform locking.

Client A doesn't lock the document, but does a GET and begins
editing.
Client B does LOCK, performs a GET and begins editing.
Client B finishes editing, performs a PUT, then an UNLOCK.
Client A performs a PUT, overwriting and losing all of B's changes.

There are several reasons why the WebDAV protocol itself cannot
prevent this situation. First, it cannot force all clients to use
locking because it must be able compatible with HTTP clients that do not
comprehend locking. Second, it cannot require servers to find out
who support
locking because of the first principal is. For this purpose variety of repository implementations, some
of which rely on reservations and merging rather than on locking.
Finally, being stateless, it cannot enforce a sequence of operations
like LOCK / GET / PUT / UNLOCK.

WebDAV servers that support locking can reduce the lockdiscovery
property is provided. This property lists all outstanding locks,
describes their type, likelihood that
clients will accidentally overwrite each other's changes by
requiring clients to lock resources before modifying them. Such
servers would effectively prevent HTTP 1.0 and provides their HTTP 1.1 clients from
modifying resources.

WebDAV clients can be good citizens by using a lock token.

Any DAV compliant resource / retrieve /
write /unlock sequence of operations (at least by default) whenever
they interact with a WebDAV server that supports the LOCK method MUST
support the lockdiscovery property.

5 locking.

HTTP 1.1 clients can be good citizens, avoiding overwriting other
clients' changes, by using entity tags in If-Match headers with any
requests that would modify resources.

Information managers may attempt to prevent overwrites by
implementing client-side procedures requiring locking before
modifying WebDAV resources.

6 Write Lock

This section describes the semantics specific to the write access
type for locks. lock
type. The write lock is a specific instance of a lock type, and is
the only lock type described in this specification. A
DAV compliant resource MAY support the write lock.

5.1

6.1 Methods Restricted by Write Locks

A write lock prevents MUST prevent a principal without the lock from
successfully executing a PUT, POST, PROPPATCH, LOCK, UNLOCK, MOVE,
DELETE, MKCOL,
ADDREF or DELREF MKCOL on the locked resource. All other current methods,
GET in particular, function independent of the lock.

Note, however, that as new methods are created it will be necessary
to specify how they interact with a write lock.

5.2

Goland et al. [Page 17]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

6.2 Write Locks and Properties

While those without a write lock may not alter a property on a
resource it is still possible for the values of live properties to
change, even while locked, due to the requirements of their schemas.
Only dead properties and live properties defined to respect locks
are guaranteed not to change while write locked.

5.3

6.3 Write Locks and Null Resources

It is possible to assert a write lock on a null resource in order to
lock the name. A write locked null resource acts in all ways as a
null resource other than resource, except that it MUST respond to a PROPFIND request and
MUST support the lockdiscovery and supportedlock properties.

Until a method such as PUT or MKCOL is executed, the resource stays MUST
stay in the null state with the exception of the behavior stated described
above.

If the resource is unlocked without a PUT, MKCOL, or similar method
having been executed, executed then the resource is no longer required MUST return to support
the PROPFIND its original
NULL state.

A return to a full NULL state is generally interpreted as meaning
that any attempt to execute a method or on the lockdiscovery and supportedlock
properties.

Goland et al. [Page 18]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

5.4 resource will result in
a 404 Not Found.

6.4 Write Locks and Collections

A write lock on a collection prevents the addition or removal of
members of the collection by non-lock owners. As a consequence,
when a principal issues a request to create a new internal member of
a write locked collection using PUT or POST, or to remove an
existing internal member of a write locked collection using DELETE,
this request MUST fail if the principal does not have a write lock
on the collection.

However, if a write lock request is issued to a collection
containing internal member resources that are currently locked in a
manner which conflicts with the write lock, the request MUST fail
with a 425 423 Locked status code.

If a lock owner causes a resource to be added as an internal member
of a locked collection then the new resource is MUST be automatically
added to the lock. This is the only mechanism that allows a
resource to be added to a write lock. Thus, for example, if the
collection /a/b/ is write locked and the resource /c is moved to
/a/b/c then /a/b/c will be added to the write lock.

5.5

Goland et al. [Page 18]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

6.5 Write Locks and COPY/MOVE

A COPY method invocation MUST NOT duplicate any write locks active
on the source. However, as previously noted, if the COPY copies the
resource into If Request Header

If a collection that user agent is depth locked then the resource
will be added to the lock.

A MOVE does not move required to have knowledge about a lock when
requesting an operation on a locked resource, the following scenario
might occur. Program A, run by User A, takes out a write lock with on a
resource. Program B, also run by User A, has no knowledge of the
lock taken out by Program A, yet performs a PUT to the locked
resource. There In this scenario, the PUT succeeds because locks are two
exceptions
associated with a principal, not a program, and thus program B,
because it is acting with principal A's credential, is allowed to this rule. First, as noted in section 5.4, if
perform the MOVE
makes PUT. However, had program B known about the resource lock, it
would not have overwritten the resource, preferring instead to
present a child of dialog box describing the conflict to the user. Due to
this scenario, a collection that mechanism is depth locked then needed to prevent different programs
from accidentally ignoring locks taken out by other programs with
the resource will same authorization.

In order to prevent these collisions a lock token MUST be under submitted
by an authorized principal in the same lock. Second, If header for all locked resources
that a method may interact with or the method MUST fail. For
example, if a depth locked resource is moved to a be moved and both the source and
destination that is within are locked then two lock tokens must be submitted, one
for the scope of source and the
same depth other for the destination.

6.5.1 Write Lock Example

>>Request

COPY /~fielding/index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.ics.uci.edu
Destination: http://www.ics.uci.edu/users/f/fielding/index.html
If: <http://www.ics.uci.edu/users/f/fielding/index.html>
(<opaquelocktoken:f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6>)

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content

In this example, even though both the source and destination are
locked, only one lock (e.g., within token must be submitted, for the namespace tree covered by lock on the
lock),
destination. This is because the moved source resource is still not modified by
a member of COPY, and hence unaffected by the write lock. In both
cases a Lock-Token header MUST be submitted containing this example,
user agent authentication has previously occurred via a lock token
for mechanism
outside the lock on scope of the source, if locked, and on HTTP protocol, in the destination.

5.6 Refreshing underlying transport
layer.

6.6 Write Locks and COPY/MOVE

A client COPY method invocation MUST NOT submit the same duplicate any write lock request twice. Note
that a client is always aware it is resubmitting the same lock
request because it must include the Lock-Token header in order to
make locks active
on the request for a resource that is already locked. source. However, a client MAY submit a LOCK method with a Lock-Token header
but without a body. This form of LOCK MAY only be used to "refresh"
a lock. Currently, refreshing a lock only means that any timers
associated with as previously noted, if the COPY copies the lock are re-set.

Goland et al. [Page 19]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

A server MAY return a Timeout header with

resource into a lock refresh collection that is
different than the Timeout header returned when the lock was
originally requested. Additionally clients MAY submit Timeout
headers of arbitrary value with their lock refresh requests.
Servers, as always, MAY ignore Timeout headers submitted by depth locked then the
client.

If an error is received in response resource
will be added to a refresh LOCK request the
client lock.

A MOVE MUST assume that NOT move the write lock was not refreshed.

5.7 Write Locks and The Lock-Token Request Header

If a user agent with the resource although the
resource is not required subject to being added to have knowledge about a lock when
requesting an operation on a locked resource, the following scenario
might occur. Program A, run by User A, takes out a write existing lock on as specified
in section 6.4. For example, if the MOVE makes the resource a
resource. Program B, also run by User A, has no knowledge child
of the
lock taken out by Program A, yet performs a PUT to the collection that is depth locked
resource. In this scenario, then the PUT succeeds because locks are
associated with a principal, not resource will be under
that collection's lock. Additionally, if a program, and thus program B,
because it is acting with principal A's credential, depth locked resource is allowed
moved to
perform a destination that is within the PUT. However, had program B known about scope of the lock, it
would not have overwritten same depth
lock (e.g., within the resource, preferring instead to
present a dialog box describing namespace tree covered by the conflict to lock), the user. Due to
this scenario,
moved resource will again be a mechanism is needed to prevent different programs
from accidentally ignoring locks taken out by other programs with member of the same authorization. lock. In order to prevent both these collisions the Lock-Token request header,
defined
examples, as specified in Section 8.7, is introduced.

5.7.1 Write Lock Token Example

>>Request

COPY /~fielding/index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.ics.uci.edu
Destination: http://www.ics.uci.edu/users/f/fielding/index.html
Lock-Token: <opaquelocktoken:f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6>
Authorization: Digest username="fielding",
realm="fielding@ics.uci.edu", nonce="...",
uri="/~fielding/index.html", response="...",
opaque="..."

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content

In this example, even though section 6.5, an If header must be
submitted containing a lock token for both the source and destination are
locked, only one
destination.

6.7 Refreshing Write Locks

A client MUST NOT submit the same write lock token request twice. Note
that a client is always aware it is resubmitting the same lock
request because it must be submitted, for include the lock on token in the
destination. This is due If header in
order to make the source request for a resource not being modified
during that is already locked.

However, a client may submit a LOCK method with an If header but
without a body. This form of LOCK MUST only be used to "refresh" a COPY, and hence unaffected by the write
lock. The

Goland et al. [Page 20]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

Authorization Meaning, at minimum, that any timers associated with the lock
MUST be re-set.

A server may return a Timeout header provides with a lock refresh that is
different than the Digest authentication credentials
for Timeout header returned when the principal making lock was
originally requested. Additionally clients may submit Timeout
headers of arbitrary value with their lock refresh requests.
Servers, as always, may ignore Timeout headers submitted by the
client.

If an error is received in response to a refresh LOCK request (note the
client SHOULD assume that the nonce, response,
and opaque fields have lock was not been calculated refreshed.

7 HTTP Methods for this example). Distributed Authoring

The
source following new HTTP methods use XML as a request and response
format. All DAV compliant clients and the destination resources MUST use XML
parsers that are both located within the
same authentication realm, therefore only one set of Authorization
credentials needs to be submitted.

6 Notational Conventions

Since this document describes a set of extensions to the HTTP/1.1
protocol, the augmented BNF compliant with [Bray, Paoli, Sperberg-McQueen,
1998]. All XML used herein to describe protocol
elements is exactly the same as described in Section 2.1 of
[Fielding et al., 1997]. Since this augmented BNF uses either requests or responses MUST be, at
minimum, well formed. If a server receives ill-formed XML in a
request it MUST reject the basic
production rules provided entire request with a 400 Bad Request.
If a client receives ill-formed XML in Section 2.2 a response then it MUST NOT
assume anything about the outcome of [Fielding et al., 1997],
these rules apply to this document as well.

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", the executed method and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted SHOULD
treat the server as described in RFC 2119 [Bradner,
1997].

7 HTTP Methods for Distributed Authoring malfunctioning.

Goland et al. [Page 20]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

7.1 PROPFIND

The PROPFIND method retrieves properties defined on the Request-URI,
if the resource does not have any internal members, or on the
Request-URI and potentially its member resources, if the resource
does have internal members. All DAV compliant resources MUST
support the PROPFIND method. method and the propfind XML element (section
11.14) along with all XML elements defined for use with that
element.

A client MAY may submit a Depth header with a value of "0", "1", or
"infinity" with a PROPFIND on a resource with internal members. DAV
compliant servers MUST support the "0", "1" and "infinity"
behaviors. By default, the PROPFIND method without a Depth header
MUST act as if a "Depth: infinity" header was included.

A client MAY may submit a propfind XML element in the body of the
request method describing what information is being requested. It
is possible to request particular property values, all property
values, or a list of the names of the resource's properties. A
client MAY may choose not to submit a request body. An empty PROPFIND
request body MUST be treated as a request for the names and values
of all properties.

The response is

All servers MUST support returning a response of content type
text/xml message body that contains a multistatus XML element that describes the
results of the attempts to retrieve the various properties.

If a property was successfully retrieved
then its value MUST be returned in a prop XML element.

Goland et al. [Page 21]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

If there is an error retrieving a property then a proper error
result must MUST be included. Requests included in the response. A request to retrieve the
value of a property which does not exist is an error and MUST be noted
noted, if the response uses a multistatus XML element, with a
response XML element which contains a 404 Not Found status value.

Consequently, the multistatus XML element for a resource with
members MUST include a response XML element for each member of the
resource, to whatever depth was requested. Each response XML element
MUST contain an href XML element that identifies the resource on
which the properties in the prop XML element are defined. Results
for a PROPFIND on a resource with internal members are returned as a
flat list whose order of entries is not significant.

In the case of allprop and propname, if a principal does not have
the right to know if whether a particular property exists then a 404 Not
Found MUST the
property should be returned. silently excluded from the response.

The results of this method SHOULD NOT be cached.

Goland et al. [Page 21]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

7.1.1 Example: Retrieving Named Properties

>>Request

PROPFIND /files/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.bar
Depth: 0
Content-type: text/xml
Content-Length: xyz

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href ="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<?xml:namespace name="http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/" as="R"?>
<D:propfind>
<D:href>http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/bigbox</D:href>
<D:href>http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/author</D:href>
<D:href>http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/DingALing</D:href>
<D:href>http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/Random</D:href>
<D:prop>
<R:bigbox/>
<R:author/>
<R:DingALing/>
<R:Random/>
</D:prop>
</D:propfind>

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx

Goland et al. [Page 22]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
<R:bigbox>
<R:BoxType>Box type A</R:BoxType>
</R:bigbox>
<R:author>
<R:Name>J.J. Johnson</R:Name>
</R:author>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop><R:DingALing/><R:Random/></D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden</D:status>
<D:responsedescription> The user does not have access to
the DingALing property.
</D:responsedescription>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
<D:responsedescription> There has been an access violation error.
</D:responsedescription>
</D:multistatus>

In this example, PROPFIND is executed on the collection
http://www.foo.bar/files/. The specified depth is zero, hence the
PROPFIND applies only to the collection itself, and not to any of
its members. The propfind XML element specifies the name of four
properties whose values are being requested. In this case only two
properties were returned, since the principal issuing the request
did not have sufficient access rights to see the third and fourth
properties.

7.1.2 Example: Using allprop to Retrieve All Properties

>>Request

PROPFIND /container/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.bar
Depth: 1
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href ="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/" as="D"?>
<D:propfind>
<D:allprop/>
</D:propfind>

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx

Goland et al. [Page 23]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/" as="S"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/" as="R"?>
<S:multistatus>
<S:response>
<S:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/</S:href>
<S:propstat>
<S:prop>
<R:bigbox>
<R:BoxType>Box type A</R:BoxType>
</R:bigbox>
<R:author>
<R:Name>Hadrian</R:Name>
</R:author>
<S:creationdate>
1997-12-01T17:42:21-08:00
</S:creationdate>
<S:displayname>
Example collection
</S:displayname>
<S:externalmembers>
<S:href>http://www.acme.com/front/</S:href>
</S:externalmembers>
<S:resourcetype><S:collection/></S:resourcetype>
<S:supportedlock>
<S:lockentry>
<S:exclusive/><S:write/>
</S:lockentry>
<S:lockentry>
<S:shared/><S:write/>
</S:lockentry>
</S:supportedlock>
</S:prop>
<S:status>HTTP 1.1 200 OK</S:status>
</S:propstat>
</S:response>
<S:response>
<S:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/front.html</S:href>
<S:propstat>
<S:prop>
<R:bigbox>
<R:BoxType>Box type B</R:BoxType>
</R:bigbox>
<S:creationdate>
1997-12-01T18:27:21-08:00
</S:creationdate>
<S:displayname>
Example HTML resource
</S:displayname>
<S:getcontentlength>
4525
</S:getcontentlength>

Goland et al. [Page 24] 22]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

<S:getcontenttype>
text/html
</S:getcontenttype>
<S:getetag>
zzyzx
</S:getetag>
<S:getlastmodified>
Monday, 12-Jan-98 09:25:56 GMT
</S:getlastmodified>
<S:resourcetype/>
<S:supportedlock>
<S:lockentry>
<S:exclusive/><S:write/>
</S:lockentry>
<S:lockentry>
<S:shared/><S:write/>
</S:lockentry>
</S:supportedlock>
</S:prop>
<S:status>HTTP 1.1 200 OK</S:status>
</S:propstat>
</S:response>
</S:multistatus> WebDAV March 6, 1998

</D:response>
<D:responsedescription> There has been an access violation error.
</D:responsedescription>
</D:multistatus>

In this example, PROPFIND was invoked is executed on the resource
http://www.foo.bar/container/ with a Depth header of 1, meaning collection
http://www.foo.bar/files/. The specified depth is zero, hence the
request
PROPFIND applies only to the resource collection itself, and not to any of
its children, and a members. The propfind XML element containing the allprop XML element, meaning the request
should return specifies the name and value of all properties defined on each
resource.

The resource http://www.foo.bar/container/ has seven properties
defined on it, named http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/bigbox,
http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/author,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/creationdate,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/displayname,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/externalmembers,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/resourcetype, and
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/supportedlock. The last five
properties are WebDAV-specific, defined in Section 12. Since GET is
not supported on this resource, the get-* four
properties (e.g., get-
content-length) whose values are being requested. In this case only two
properties were returned, since the principal issuing the request
did not defined on this resource. The DAV-specific
properties assert that "container" was created on December 1, 1997,
at 5:42:21PM, in a time zone 8 hours west of GMT (creationdate), has
a name of "Example collection" (displayname), a single external
member resource, http://www.acme.com/front/ (externalmembers), a
collection resource type (resourcetype), and supports exclusive
write and shared write locks (supportedlock).

The resource http://www.foo.bar/container/front.html has nine
properties defined on it, named http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/bigbox
(another instance of the "bigbox" property type),

Goland et al. [Page 25]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/creationdate,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/displayname,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/getcontentlength,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/getcontenttype,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/getetag,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/getlastmodified,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/resourcetype, and
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/supportedlock. The DAV-specific
properties assert that "front.html" was created on December 1, 1997,
at 6:27:21PM, in a time zone 8 hours west of GMT (creationdate), has
a name of "Example HTML resource" (displayname), a content length of
4525 (getcontentlength), a MIME type of "text/html"
(getcontenttype), an entity tag of "zzyzx" (getetag), was last
modified on Monday, January 12, 1998, at 09:25:56 GMT
(getlastmodified), has an undefined resource type, meaning that it
is not a collection (resourcetype), and supports both exclusive
write have sufficient access rights to see the third and shared write locks (supportedlock).

7.1.3 fourth
properties.

7.1.2 Example: Using propname allprop to Retrieve all Property Names All Properties

>>Request

PROPFIND /container/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.bar
Depth: 1
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href ="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<D:propfind>
<D:propname/>
<D:allprop/>
</D:propfind>

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxx xxxxx

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/"
<?xml:namespace name="http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/" as="R"?>
<D:multistatus>
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<R:bigbox/>
<R:author/>
<D:creationdate/>
<D:displayname/>
<D:externalmembers/>
<R:bigbox>
<R:BoxType>Box type A</R:BoxType>
</R:bigbox>
<R:author>
<R:Name>Hadrian</R:Name>
</R:author>
<D:creationdate>
1997-12-01T17:42:21-08:00

Goland et al. [Page 26] 23]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

<D:resourcetype/>
<D:supportedlock/>

</D:creationdate>
<D:displayname>
Example collection
</D:displayname>
<D:resourcetype><D:collection/></D:resourcetype>
<D:supportedlock>
<D:lockentry>
<D:exclusive/><D:write/>
</D:lockentry>
<D:lockentry>
<D:shared/><D:write/>
</D:lockentry>
</D:supportedlock>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP 1.1
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/front.html</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<R:bigbox/>
<D:creationdate/>
<D:displayname/>
<D:get-content-length/>
<D:get-content-type/>
<D:get-etag/>
<D:get-last-modified/>
<R:bigbox>
<R:BoxType>Box type B</R:BoxType>
</R:bigbox>
<D:creationdate>
1997-12-01T18:27:21-08:00
</D:creationdate>
<D:displayname>
Example HTML resource
</D:displayname>
<D:getcontentlength>
4525
</D:getcontentlength>
<D:getcontenttype>
text/html
</D:getcontenttype>
<D:getetag>
zzyzx
</D:getetag>
<D:getlastmodified>
Monday, 12-Jan-98 09:25:56 GMT
</D:getlastmodified>
<D:resourcetype/>
<D:supportedlock/>
<D:supportedlock>
<D:lockentry>
<D:exclusive/><D:write/>
</D:lockentry>
<D:lockentry>
<D:shared/><D:write/>
</D:lockentry>
</D:supportedlock>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP 1.1

Goland et al. [Page 24]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>

In this example, PROPFIND is was invoked on the collection resource
http://www.foo.bar/container/,
http://www.foo.bar/container/ with a propfind XML element
containing the propname XML element, meaning the name of all
properties should be returned. Since no depth Depth header is present, it
assumes its default value of "infinity", meaning the name of the
properties on the collection and all its progeny should be returned.

Consistent with the previous example, resource
http://www.foo.bar/container/ has seven properties defined on it,
http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/bigbox, and
http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/author,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/creationdate,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/displayname,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/externalmembers,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/resourcetype, and
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/supportedlock. The resource
http://www.foo.bar/container/index.html, a member of the "container"
collection, has nine properties defined on it,
http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/bigbox,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/creationdate,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/displayname,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/get-content-length,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/get-content-type,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/get-etag,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/get-last-modified,

Goland et al. [Page 27]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/resourcetype, and
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/supportedlock.

7.2 PROPPATCH

The PROPPATCH method processes instructions specified in the request
body to set and/or remove properties defined on the resource
identified by Request-URI.

All DAV compliant resources MUST support the PROPPATCH method and
MUST process instructions that are specified using the
propertyupdate, set, and remove XML elements of the DAV schema.
Execution of 1, meaning the directives in this method is, of course, subject
request applies to
access control constraints. DAV compliant resources SHOULD support the setting of arbitrary dead properties.

The request message body of resource and its children, and a PROPPATCH method MUST contain at least
one propertyupdate propfind XML element. Instruction processing MUST occur in
element containing the order instructions are received (i.e., from top to bottom).
Instructions MUST either all be executed or none executed. Thus if
any error occurs during processing all executed instructions MUST be
undone and a proper error result returned. Instruction processing

details can be found in allprop XML element, meaning the definition of request
should return the set name and remove
instructions in Section 11.13.

If PROPPATCH is invoked value of all properties defined on a null resource (e.g., a deleted
resource), an empty each
resource.

The resource is created, http://www.foo.bar/container/ has six properties
defined on it:

http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/bigbox,
http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/author, DAV:creationdate,
DAV:displayname, DAV:resourcetype, and DAV:supportedlock.

The last four properties are WebDAV-specific, defined in section 12.
Since GET is not supported on this resource, the PROPPATCH
directives get* properties
(e.g., getcontentlength) are performed not defined on this new resource.

7.2.1 Status Codes

200 OK - The command succeeded. As there can be DAV-
specific properties assert that "container" was created on December
1, 1997, at 5:42:21PM, in a mixture time zone 8 hours west of sets
and removes in GMT
(creationdate), has a body, name of "Example collection" (displayname), a 201 Created seems inappropriate.

403 Forbidden -
collection resource type (resourcetype), and supports exclusive
write and shared write locks (supportedlock).

The client, for reasons the server chooses not to
specify, cannot alter one resource http://www.foo.bar/container/front.html has nine
properties defined on it:

http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/bigbox (another instance of the properties.

409 Conflict -
"bigbox" property type), DAV:creationdate, DAV:displayname,
DAV:getcontentlength, DAV:getcontenttype, DAV:getetag,
DAV:getlastmodified, DAV:resourcetype, and DAV:supportedlock.

The client DAV-specific properties assert that "front.html" was created on
December 1, 1997, at 6:27:21PM, in a time zone 8 hours west of GMT
(creationdate), has provided a value whose semantics are
not appropriate for the property. This includes trying to set read-
only properties.

413 Request Entity Too Long - If name of "Example HTML resource" (displayname),
a particular property content length of 4525 bytes (getcontentlength), a MIME type of
"text/html" (getcontenttype), an entity tag of "zzyzx" (getetag),
was last modified on Monday, January 12, 1998, at 09:25:56 GMT
(getlastmodified), has an undefined resource type, meaning that it
is too long
to be recorded then not a composite XML error will be returned
indicating the offending property.

7.2.2 Example

>>Request

PROPPATCH /bar.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.com collection (resourcetype), and supports both exclusive
write and shared write locks (supportedlock).

Goland et al. [Page 28] 25]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

7.1.3 Example: Using propname to Retrieve all Property Names

>>Request

PROPFIND /container/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.bar
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxx xxxxx

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.w3.com/standards/z39.50/" as="Z"?>
<D:propertyupdate>
<D:set>
<D:prop>
<Z:authors>
<Z:Author>Jim Whitehead</Z:Author>
<Z:Author>Roy Fielding</Z:Author>
</Z:authors>
</D:prop>
</D:set>
<D:remove>
<D:prop><Z:Copyright-Owner/></D:prop>
</D:remove>
</D:propertyupdate>
<D:propfind>
<D:propname/>
</D:propfind>

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx xxxx

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.w3.com/standards/z39.50/" as="Z"?>
<D:multistatus>
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.foo.com/bar</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop><Z:Authors/></D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 424 Method Failure</D:status>
</D:propstat>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop><Z:Copyright-Owner/></D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 409 Conflict</D:status>
</D:propstat>
<D:responsedescription> Copyright Owner can not be deleted or
altered.</D:responsedescription>
<D:response>
</D:multistatus>

In this example, the client requests the server to set the value of
the http://www.w3.com/standards/z39.50/Authors property, and to
remove the property http://www.w3.com/standards/z39.50/Copyright-
Owner. Since the Copyright-Owner property could not be removed, no
property modifications occur. The Method Failure status code for
the Authors property indicates this action would have succeeded if
<?xml:namespace name="http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/" as="R"?>
<D:multistatus>
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<R:bigbox/>
<R:author/>
<D:creationdate/>

<D:displayname/>
<D:resourcetype/>
<D:supportedlock/>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/front.html</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<R:bigbox/>
<D:creationdate/>
<D:displayname/>
<D:getcontentlength/>
<D:getcontenttype/>
<D:getetag/>
<D:getlastmodified/>
<D:resourcetype/>
<D:supportedlock/>

Goland et al. [Page 29] 26]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

it were not for

</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>

In this example, PROPFIND is invoked on the conflict collection resource
http://www.foo.bar/container/, with removing a propfind XML element
containing the Copyright-Owner
property.

7.3 MKCOL Method

The MKCOL method propname XML element, meaning the name of all
properties should be returned. Since no depth header is used to create a new collection. All DAV
compliant resources MUST support present, it
assumes its default value of "infinity", meaning the name of the
properties on the MKCOL method.

7.3.1 Request

MKCOL creates a new collection and all its progeny should be returned.

Consistent with the previous example, resource at
http://www.foo.bar/container/ has six properties defined on it,
http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/bigbox,
http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/author, DAV:creationdate,
DAV:displayname, DAV:resourcetype, and DAV:supportedlock.

The resource http://www.foo.bar/container/index.html, a member of
the location "container" collection, has nine properties defined on it,
http://www.foo.bar/boxschema/bigbox, DAV:creationdate,
DAV:displayname, DAV:getcontentlength, DAV:getcontenttype,
DAV:getetag, DAV:getlastmodified, DAV:resourcetype, and
DAV:supportedlock.

7.2 PROPPATCH

The PROPPATCH method processes instructions specified by in the Request-URI. If request
body to set and/or remove properties defined on the resource
identified by the Request-URI is
non-null then Request-URI.

All DAV compliant resources MUST support the MKCOL must fail. During MKCOL processing, a
server PROPPATCH method and
MUST make process instructions that are specified using the Request-URI a member
propertyupdate, set, and remove XML elements of its parent collection.
If no such ancestor exists, the DAV schema.
Execution of the directives in this method is, of course, subject to
access control constraints. DAV compliant resources SHOULD support
the setting of arbitrary dead properties.

The request message body of a PROPPATCH method MUST fail. When the MKCOL
operation creates a new collection resource, all ancestors contain at least
one propertyupdate XML element. Instruction processing MUST
already exist, or occur in
the method order instructions are received (i.e., from top to bottom).
Instructions MUST fail with a 409 Conflict status
code. For example, either all be executed or none executed. Thus if a request to create collection /a/b/c/d/ is
made, and neither /a/b/ nor /a/b/c/ exists, the request
any error occurs during processing all executed instructions MUST fail.

When MKCOL is invoked without be
undone and a request body, proper error result returned. Instruction processing
details can be found in the newly created
collection has no members.

A MKCOL request message MAY contain a message body. The behavior definition of
a MKCOL request when the body is present is limited to creating
collections, members of a collection, bodies of members set and
properties on the collections or members. If the server receives a
MKCOL request entity type it does not support or understand it MUST
respond remove
instructions in section 11.13.

Goland et al. [Page 27]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

7.2.1 Status Codes for use with a 415 Unsupported Media Type status code. Multi-Status

The exact
behavior following are examples of MKCOL for various request media types is undefined response codes one would expect to be
used in a Multi-Status response for this document, and will method. Note, however,
that unless explicitly prohibited any 2/3/4/5xx series response code

may be specified used in separate documents.

7.3.2 Response Codes

Responses from a MKCOL request are not cacheable, since MKCOL has
non-idempotent semantics. Multi-Status response.

200 OK - The command succeeded. As there can be a mixture of sets
and removes in a body, a 201 Created - The collection or structured resource was created in
its entirety. seems inappropriate.

403 Forbidden - This indicates at least one of two conditions: 1) The client, for reasons the server does chooses not allow the creation of collections at the given
location in its namespace, and 2) The parent collection to
specify, cannot alter one of the
Request-URI exists but cannot accept members.

405 Method Not Allowed - MKCOL can only be executed on a
deleted/non-existent resource. properties.

409 Conflict - A collection cannot be made at The client has provided a value whose semantics are
not appropriate for the Request-URI until
one or more intermediate collections have been created.

Goland et al. [Page 30]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

415 Unsupported Media Type- property. This includes trying to set read-
only properties.

423 Locked - The server does specified resource is locked and the client either
is not support a lock owner or the request lock type of requires a lock token to be
submitted and the body.

423 client did not submit it.

425 Insufficient Space on Resource - The resource does server did not have
sufficient space to record record the property.

7.2.2 Example

>>Request

PROPPATCH /bar.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.com
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxx

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<?xml:namespace name="http://www.w3.com/standards/z39.50/" as="Z"?>
<D:propertyupdate>
<D:set>
<D:prop>
<Z:authors>
<Z:Author>Jim Whitehead</Z:Author>
<Z:Author>Roy Fielding</Z:Author>
</Z:authors>
</D:prop>
</D:set>
<D:remove>
<D:prop><Z:Copyright-Owner/></D:prop>
</D:remove>
</D:propertyupdate>

Goland et al. [Page 28]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<?xml:namespace name="http://www.w3.com/standards/z39.50/" as="Z"?>
<D:multistatus>
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.foo.com/bar.html</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop><Z:Authors/></D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 424 Method Failure</D:status>
</D:propstat>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop><Z:Copyright-Owner/></D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 409 Conflict</D:status>
</D:propstat>
<D:responsedescription> Copyright Owner can not be deleted or
altered.</D:responsedescription>
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>

In this example, the client requests the server to set the state value of
the resource after http://www.w3.com/standards/z39.50/Authors property, and to
remove the
execution of property http://www.w3.com/standards/z39.50/Copyright-
Owner. Since the Copyright-Owner property could not be removed, no
property modifications occur. The Method Failure status code for
the Authors property indicates this method.

7.3.3 Example

This example creates a collection called /webdisc/xfiles/ on action would have succeeded if
it were not for the
server www.server.org.

>>Request conflict with removing the Copyright-Owner
property.

7.3 MKCOL /webdisc/xfiles/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.server.org

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 201 Created

7.4 ADDREF Method

The ADDREF MKCOL method is used to add external members to create a resource. new collection. All DAV
compliant collection resources MUST support the ADDREF MKCOL method. All other DAV compliant resources MAY support the ADDREF
method as appropriate.

7.4.1 The

7.3.1 Request

The ADDREF method adds

MKCOL creates a new collection resource at the URI location specified in by
the Collection-Member
header as an external member to Request-URI. If the collection specified resource identified by the
Request-URI.

It Request-URI is not an error if
non-null then the URI specified in MKCOL MUST fail. During MKCOL processing, a
server MUST make the Collection-Member
header already exists as an external Request-URI a member of its parent collection,
unless the collection.
However, after processing Request-URI is "/". If no such ancestor exists, the ADDREF there
method MUST be only one instance fail. When the MKCOL operation creates a new collection
resource, all ancestors MUST already exist, or the method MUST fail
with a 409 Conflict status code. For example, if a request to
create collection /a/b/c/d/ is made, and neither /a/b/ nor /a/b/c/
exists, the request must fail.

Goland et al. [Page 29]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

When MKCOL is invoked without a request body, the newly created
collection SHOULD have no members.

A MKCOL request message may contain a message body. The behavior of
a MKCOL request when the URI in the collection. If the URI specified in the
Collection-Member header already exists as an internal member body is present is limited to creating
collections, members of the a collection, bodies of members and
properties on the ADDREF method collections or members. If the server receives a
MKCOL request entity type it does not support or understand it MUST fail
respond with a 412 Precondition
Failed 415 Unsupported Media Type status code.

More than one Collection-Member The exact
behavior of MKCOL for various request media types is undefined in
this document, and will be specified in separate documents.

7.3.2 Response Codes

Responses from a MKCOL request header MUST NOT be used with
the ADDREF method.

7.4.2 Example

>>Request

ADDREF /~ejw/dav/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.ics.uci.edu

Goland et al. [Page 31]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

Collection-Member: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content

This example adds the URI http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ cached as an
external member MKCOL has non-
idempotent semantics.

201 Created - The collection or structured resource was created in
its entirety.

403 Forbidden - This indicates at least one of two conditions: 1)
the server does not allow the creation of collections at the given
location in its namespace, or 2) the parent collection
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/dav/.

7.5 DELREF of the
Request-URI exists but cannot accept members.

405 Method

The DELREF method is used to remove external members from Not Allowed - MKCOL can only be executed on a
deleted/non-existent resource. All DAV compliant

409 Conflict - A collection resources MUST support the
DELREF method. All other DAV compliant resources MUST support the
DELREF method only if they support the ADDREF method.

7.5.1 The Request

The DELREF method removes the URI specified in cannot be made at the Collection-Member
header from Request-URI until
one or more intermediate collections have been created.

415 Unsupported Media Type- The server does not support the collection specified by request
type of the Request-URI.

DELREFing a URI which is body.

425 Insufficient Space on Resource - The resource does not a member have
sufficient space to record the state of the collection is not an
error. DELREFing an internal member MUST fail with a 412
Precondition Failed status code.

More than one Collection-Member request header MUST NOT be used with resource after the DELREF
execution of this method.

7.5.2

7.3.3 Example

This example creates a collection called /webdisc/xfiles/ on the
server www.server.org.

>>Request

DELREF /~ejw/dav/

MKCOL /webdisc/xfiles/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.ics.udi.edu
Collection-Member: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ www.server.org

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content

This example removes the URI http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/, an
external member resource, from the collection
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/dav/.

7.6 GET, HEAD for Collections 201 Created

Goland et al. [Page 32] 30]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

7.4 GET, HEAD for Collections

The semantics of GET are unchanged when applied to a collection,
since GET is defined as, "retrieve whatever information (in the form
of an entity) is identified by the Request-URI" [Fielding et al.,
1997]. GET when applied to a collection MAY may return the contents of
an "index.html" resource, a human-readable view of the contents of
the collection, or something else altogether. Hence it is possible
that the result of a GET on a collection will bear no correlation to
the state membership of the collection.

Similarly, since the definition of HEAD is a GET without a response
message body, the semantics of HEAD are unmodified when applied to
collection resources.

7.7

7.5 POST for Collections

Since by definition the actual function performed by POST is
determined by the server and often depends on the particular
resource, the behavior of POST when applied to collections cannot be
meaningfully modified because it is largely undefined. Thus the
semantics of POST are unmodified when applied to a collection.

7.8

7.6 DELETE

7.8.1

7.6.1 DELETE for Non-Collection Resources

If the DELETE method is issued to a non-collection resource which is
an internal member of a collection, then during DELETE processing a
server MUST remove the Request-URI from its parent collection. A
server MAY remove the URI of a deleted resource from any collections
of which the resource is an external member.

7.8.2

7.6.2 DELETE for Collections

The DELETE method on a collection MUST act as if a Depth = infinity "Depth: infinity"
header was used on it. A client MUST NOT submit a Depth header on with
a DELETE on a collection with any value but infinity.

DELETE instructs that the collection specified in the request-URI,
the records of its external member resources, request-URI
and all its internal member resources, resources are to be deleted.

If any member cannot be deleted then all of the member's ancestors
MUST NOT be deleted, so as to maintain the namespace.

Any headers included with DELETE MUST be applied in processing every
resource to be deleted.

When the DELETE method has completed processing it MUST return a
consistent namespace.

If an error occurs with a resource other than the resource
identified in the request URI then the response MUST be a 207 Multi-

Goland et al. [Page 33] 31]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

The response

Status. 424 Method Failure errors SHOULD NOT be a Multi-Status response in the 207 Multi-
Status. They can be safely left out because the client will know
that describes the
result ancestors of a resource could not be deleted when the DELETE on each affected resource.

7.8.2.1

client receives an error for the ancestor's progeny. Additionally
204 No Content errors SHOULD NOT be returned in the 207 Multi-
Status. The reason for this prohibition is that 204 No Content is
the default success code.

7.6.2.1 Example

>>Request

DELETE /container/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.bar

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="d"?>
<d:multistatus>
<d:response>
<d:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/resource1</d:href>
<d:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/resource2</d:href>
<d:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</d:status>
</d:response>
<d:response>
<d:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/</d:href>
<d:status>HTTP/1.1 424 Method Failure</d:status>
</d:response>
<d:response>
<d:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/resource3</d:href>
<d:status>HTTP/1.1 425 423 Locked</d:status>
</d:response>
</d:multistatus>

In this example the attempt to delete
http://www.foo.bar/container/resource3 failed because it is locked,
and no lock token was submitted with the request. Consequently, the
attempt to delete http://www.foo.bar/container/ also failed, but
resource1 and resource2 were failed. Thus
the client knows that the attempt to delete
http://ww.foo.bar/container/ must have also failed since the parent
can not be deleted unless its child has also been deleted. Even
though a Depth header has not been included, a depth of infinity is
assumed because the method is on a collection. As this example illustrates, DELETE processing
need not be atomic.

7.9

7.7 PUT

7.9.1

7.7.1 PUT for Non-Collection Resources

A PUT performed on an existing resource replaces the GET response
entity of the resource. Properties defined on the resource MAY may be
recomputed during PUT processing but are not otherwise effected. affected.
For example, if a server recognizes the content type of the request

Goland et al. [Page 34]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
body, it may be able to automatically extract information that could
be profitably exposed as properties.

Goland et al. [Page 32]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

A PUT that would result in the creation of a resource without an
appropriately scoped parent collection MUST fail with a 409
Conflict.

7.9.2

7.7.2 PUT for Collections

As defined in the HTTP/1.1 specification [Fielding et al., 1997],
the "PUT method requests that the enclosed entity be stored under
the supplied Request-URI." Since submission of an entity
representing a collection would implicitly encode creation and
deletion of resources, this specification intentionally does not
define a transmission format for creating a collection using PUT.
Instead, the MKCOL method is defined to create collections. If a
PUT is invoked on a collection resource it MUST fail.

When the PUT operation creates a new non-collection resource all
ancestors MUST already exist. If all ancestors do not exist, the
method MUST fail with a 409 Conflict status code. For example, if
resource /a/b/c/d.html is to be created and /a/b/c/ does not exist,
then the request must fail.

7.10

7.8 COPY Method

The COPY method creates a duplicate of the source resource, given by
the Request-URI, in the destination resource, given by the
Destination header. The Destination header MUST be present. The
exact behavior of the COPY method depends on the type of the source
resource.

Support

All WebDAV compliant resources MUST support the COPY method.
However, support for the COPY method does not guarantee the ability
to copy a resource. For example, separate programs may control
resources on the same server. As a result, it may not even be possible
to copy a resource to a location that appears to be on the same
server.

7.10.1

7.8.1 COPY for HTTP/1.1 resources

When the source resource is not a collection the body result of the COPY
method is the creation of a new resource at the destination whose
state and behavior match that of the source resource MUST be octet-for-octet identical to as closely as
possible. However, the body exact state and behavior of the destination
resource depend on what information the source resource. resource is able to
provide and what information the destination resource is able to
accept.

Subsequent alterations to the destination resource will not modify
the source resource. Subsequent alterations to the source resource
will not modify the destination resource. Thus, all copies are performed "by-value".

All properties on the source resource MUST be duplicated on the
destination resource, subject to modifying headers and XML elements,
following the definition for copying properties.

7.10.2 COPY for Properties

Goland et al. [Page 35] 33]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

7.8.2 COPY for Properties

The following section defines how properties on a resource are
handled during a COPY operation.

Live properties SHOULD be duplicated as identically behaving live
properties at the destination resource. If a property cannot be
copied live, then its value MUST be duplicated, octet-for-octet, in

an identically named, dead property on the destination resource. resource
subject to the effects of the propertybehavior XML element.

The propertybehavior XML element can specify that properties are
copied on best effort, that all live properties MUST must be successfully
copied or the method MUST must fail, or that a specified list of live
properties MUST must be successfully copied or the method must fail. The
propertybehavior XML element is defined in Section 11.12.

If a property on the source already exists on the destination
resource and the Overwrite header is set to "T" then the property at
the destination MUST be overwritten with the property from the
source. If the Overwrite header is "F" and the previous situation
exists, then the COPY MUST fail with a 412 Precondition Failed.

7.10.3 must fail. The
propertybehavior XML element is defined in section 11.12.

7.8.3 COPY for Collections

The COPY method on a collection without a Depth header MUST act as
if a Depth header with value "infinity" was included. A client MAY may
submit a Depth header on a COPY on a collection with a value of "0"
or "infinity". DAV compliant servers MUST support the "0" and
"infinity" Depth header behaviors.

A COPY of depth infinity instructs that the collection specified in
the Request-URI and the records of its external member resources is to be copied to the location specified in the
Destination header, and all its internal member resources are to be
copied to a location relative to it, recursively through all levels
of the collection hierarchy.

A COPY of depth "0" only instructs that the collection, the
properties, collection and the records of its external members,
properties but not its internal members, are to be copied.

Any headers included with a COPY are to MUST be applied in processing every
resource to be copied.

The copied with the exception to this rule is of the Destination header. This

The Destination header only specifies the destination for the
Request-URI. When applied to members of the collection specified in
the request-URI the value of Destination is to be modified to
reflect the current location in the hierarchy. So, if the request-URI request-
URI is "a" /a/ and the destination is "b" /b/ then when a/c/d /a/c/d is processed
it MUST must use a destination of b/c/d. /b/c/d.

When the COPY method has completed processing it MUST have created a
consistent namespace at the destination. However, if an error

Goland et al. [Page 36]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
occurs while copying an internal member collection, all members of
this collection the server MUST
NOT be copied. In copy any members of this case, after collection. After detecting
the an error,
the COPY operation SHOULD try to finish as much of the original copy
operation as possible. So, for example, if an infinite depth copy
operation is performed on collection /a/, which contains collections

Goland et al. [Page 34]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

/a/b/ and /a/c/, and an error occurs copying /a/b/, an attempt
should still be made to copy /a/c/. Similarly, after encountering an
error copying a non-collection resource as part of an infinite depth
copy, the server SHOULD try to finish as much of the original copy
operation as possible.

The response is a Multi-Status status code with

If an entity body that
describes the result of error in executing the COPY on each affected resource. The
href XML element method occurs with a resource
other than the resource identified in the response refers to request URI then the resource that was to
response MUST be copied, not the resource that was created as a result of 207 Multi-Status.

424 Method Failure errors SHOULD NOT be returned in the
copy. In other words, each entry indicates whether 207 Multi-
Status from a COPY method. These responses can be safely omitted
because the copy on client will know that the progeny of a resource specified in could
not be copied when the href XML element succeeded or failed and
why.

The exception to this rule is client receives an error for errors that occurred on the
destination. For example, if the destination was locked the parent.
Additionally 201 Created/204 No Content response would indicate codes SHOULD NOT be
returned as values in 207 Multi-Status responses from COPY methods.
They, too, can be safely omitted because they are the destination URL default
success codes.

7.8.4 COPY and a 425 Locked error.

7.10.4 Type Interactions the Overwrite Header

If a resource exists at the destination resource identifies a collection and the Overwrite header is "T",
"T" then prior to performing the copy the server MUST perform a
DELETE operation with Depth Infinity on the collection.

7.10.5 destination resource. If the
Overwrite header is set to "F" then the operation will fail.

7.8.5 Status Codes

201 Created - The source resource was successfully copied. The copy
operation resulted in the creation of a new resource.

204 No Content - The source resource was successfully copied to a
pre-existing destination resource. Since there is no entity body in
the response, 204 No Content is used instead of 200 OK.

412 Precondition Failed - This status code MUST be returned if the The server was unable to maintain the
liveness of the properties listed in the propertybehavior XML element,
element or if the Overwrite header is
"F", "F" and the state of the
destination resource is non-null.

423 Locked - The destination resource was locked.

425 Insufficient Space on Resource - The destination resource does
not have sufficient space to record the state of the resource after
the execution of this method.

425 Locked - The destination resource was locked and either a valid
Lock-Token header was not submitted, or the Lock-Token header
identifies a lock held by another principal.

Goland et al. [Page 37]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

502 Bad Gateway - This may occur when the destination is on another
server and the destination server refuses to accept the resource.

7.10.6

7.8.6 Overwrite Example

This example shows resource
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/index.html being copied to the

Goland et al. [Page 35]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

location http://www.ics.uci.edu/users/f/fielding/index.html. The
204 No Content status code indicates the existing resource at the
destination was overwritten.

>>Request

COPY /~fielding/index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.ics.uci.edu
Destination: http://www.ics.uci.edu/users/f/fielding/index.html

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content

7.10.7

7.8.7 No Overwrite Example

The following example shows the same copy operation being performed,
except
but with the Overwrite header set to "F." A response of 412
Precondition Failed is returned because the destination resource has
a non-null state.

>>Request

COPY /~fielding/index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.ics.uci.edu
Destination: http://www.ics.uci.edu/users/f/fielding/index.html
Overwrite: F

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 412 Precondition Failed

7.10.8

7.8.8 Collection Example

>>Request

COPY /container/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.bar
Destination: http://www.foo.bar/othercontainer/
Depth: infinity
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="d"?>
<d:propertybehavior>
<d:keepalive>*</d:keepalive>
</d:propertybehavior>

Goland et al. [Page 38] 36]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

<d:propertybehavior>
<d:keepalive>*</d:keepalive>
</d:propertybehavior>

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx

<d:response>
<d:href>http://www.foo.bar/othercontainer/R2/</d:href>
<d:href>http://www.foo.bar/othercontainer/R2/D2</d:href>
<d:status>HTTP/1.1 412 Precondition Failed</d:status>
</d:response>
</d:multistatus>

The Depth header is unnecessary as the default behavior of COPY on a
collection is to act as if a "Depth: infinity" header had been
submitted. In this example most of the resources, along with the
collection, were copied successfully. However the collection R2
failed, most likely due to a problem with maintaining the liveness
of properties (this is specified by the propertybehavior XML
element). Since Because there was an error occurred copying R2, none of R2's member D2 was not
members were copied.

7.11 However no errors were listed for those
members due to the error minimization rules given in section 7.8.3.

7.9 MOVE Method

The MOVE operation on a non-collection resource is the logical
equivalent of a copy (COPY) followed by a delete, delete of the source,
where the actions are performed atomically. Consequently, the
Destination header MUST be present on all MOVE methods and MUST
follow all COPY requirements for the COPY part of the MOVE method.
All DAV compliant resources MUST support the MOVE method. However,
support for the MOVE method does not guarantee the ability to move a
resource to a particular destination.

For example, separate programs may actually control different sets
of resources on the same server. Therefore, it may not even be possible
to move a resource within a namespace that appears to belong to the
same server.

Goland et al. [Page 39]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

If a resource exists at the destination, the destination resource
will be DELETEd as a side effect side-effect of the MOVE operation, subject to
the restrictions of the Overwrite header.

7.11.1

7.9.1 MOVE for Properties

The behavior of properties on a MOVE, including the effects of the
propertybehavior XML element, MUST be the same as specified in
section 7.8.2.

Goland et al. [Page 37]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

7.9.2 MOVE for Collections

A MOVE of depth infinity instructs that the collection specified in
the Request-URI, including the records of its external member
resources, is to that the collection specified in
the Request-URI be moved to the location specified in the
Destination header, and all its internal member resources are to be
moved to locations relative to it, recursively through all levels of
the collection hierarchy.

The MOVE method on a collection MUST act as if a Depth "infinity"
header was used on it. A client MUST NOT submit a Depth header on a
MOVE on a collection with any value but "infinity".

Any headers included with MOVE are to MUST be applied in processing every
resource to be moved.

The moved with the exception to this rule is of the Destination header.

The behavior of this the Destination header is the same as given for COPY
on collections.

When the MOVE method has completed processing it MUST have created a
consistent namespace on both the source and destination. However, if
an error occurs while moving an internal member collection, all the
server MUST NOT move any members of the failed collection MUST NOT be moved. collection.. In this
case, after detecting the error, the move operation SHOULD try to
finish as much of the original move as possible. So, for example,
if an infinite depth move is performed on collection /a/, which
contains collections /a/b/ and /a/c/, and an error occurs moving
/a/b/, an attempt should still be made to try moving /a/c/.
Similarly, after encountering an error moving a non-collection
resource as part of an infinite depth move, the server SHOULD try to
finish as much of the original move operation as possible.

As specified

If an error occurs with a resource other than the resource
identified in the definition of MOVE, a MOVE of a collection over
another collection causes request URI then the destination collection and all its
members to be deleted.

The response is MUST be a Multi-Status response that describes the result of 207 Multi-
Status.

424 Method Failure errors SHOULD NOT be returned as values in the
207 Multi-Status from a MOVE on each affected resource. The href XML element in method. These errors can be safely
omitted because the
response refers to client will know that the progeny of a resource that was to be moved,
could not be moved when the
resource that was created as a result of client receives an error for the move. In other words,
each entry indicates whether parent.
Additionally 201 Created/204 No Content responses SHOULD NOT be
returned as values in 207 Multi-Status responses from MOVES. These
responses can be safely omitted because they are the move on default success
codes.

7.9.3 MOVE and the Overwrite Header

If a resource specified in exists at the href succeeded or failed destination and why.

The exception to this rule the Overwrite header is for errors that occurred on
"T" then prior to performing the
destination. For example, if move the server MUST perform a
DELETE with Depth infinity on the destination was locked resource. If the
response would indicate
Overwrite header is set to "F" then the destination URL and a 425 Locked error.

7.11.2 Status Codes operation will fail.

Goland et al. [Page 40] 38]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

7.9.4 Status Codes

201 Created - The source resource was successfully moved, and a new
resource was created at the destination.

204 No Content - The move operation was successful, and the source resource
at the destination was overwritten. successfully moved to a
pre-existing destination resource.

425

423 Locked - The source or the destination resource was locked and
either a valid Lock-Token header was not submitted, or the Lock-
Token header identifies a lock held by another principal. locked.

502 Bad Gateway - This may occur when the destination is on another
server and the destination server refuses to accept the resource.

7.11.3

7.9.5 Non-Collection Example

This example shows resource
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/index.html being moved to the
location http://www.ics.uci.edu/users/f/fielding/index.html. The
contents of the destination resource would have been overwritten if
the destination resource had been non-null. In this case, since
there was nothing at the destination resource, the response code is
201 Created.

>>Request

MOVE /~fielding/index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.ics.uci.edu
Destination: http://www.ics.uci.edu/users/f/fielding/index.html

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Location: http://www.ics.uci.edu/users/f/fielding/index.html

7.11.4

7.9.6 Collection Example

>>Request

MOVE /container/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.bar
Destination: http://www.foo.bar/othercontainer/
Overwrite: F
Lock-Token: <opaquelocktoken:fe184f2e-6eec-41d0-c765-01adc56e6bb4>,
<opaquelocktoken:e454f3f3-acdc-452a-56c7-00a5c91e4b77>
If: (<opaquelocktoken:fe184f2e-6eec-41d0-c765-01adc56e6bb4>)
(<opaquelocktoken:e454f3f3-acdc-452a-56c7-00a5c91e4b77>)
Content-Type: text/xml

Goland et al. [Page 41] 39]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

Content-Type: text/xml

Content-Length: xyz
Authorization: Digest username="rohit",
realm="rohit@www.foo.bar", nonce="...",
uri="/container/", response="...",
opaque="..."

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="d"?>
<d:propertybehavior>
<d:keepalive>*</d:keepalive>
</d:propertybehavior>

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: zzz

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="d"?>
<d:multistatus>
<d:response>
<d:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/resource1</d:href>
<d:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/resource2</d:href>
<d:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/</d:href>
<d:status>HTTP/1.1 204 No Content</d:status>
</d:response>
<d:response>
<d:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/C2/R2</d:href>
<d:status>HTTP/1.1 424 Method Failure</d:status>
<d:response>
<d:href>http://www.foo.bar/othercontainer/C2/</d:href>
<d:status>HTTP/1.1 425 423 Locked</d:status>
</d:response>
</d:multistatus>

In this example the client has submitted a number of lock tokens
with the request. A lock token will need to be submitted for every
resource, both source and destination, anywhere in the scope of the
method, that is locked. In this case the proper lock token was not
submitted for the destination http://www.foo.bar/othercontainer/C2/.
This means that the resource /container/C2/ could not be moved. As
the attempt
Because there was an error copying /container/C2/, none of
/container/C2's members were copied. However no errors were listed
for those members due to move /container/C2/ failed then the resource
/container/C2/R2 MUST also fail since it is error minimization rules given in
section 7.8.3. User agent authentication has previously occurred
via a child mechanism outside the scope of
/container/C2/.

7.12 the HTTP protocol, in an
underlying transport layer.

7.10 LOCK Method

The following sections describe the LOCK method, which is used to
take out a lock of any access type. These sections on the LOCK

Goland et al. [Page 42]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
method describe only those semantics that are specific to the LOCK
method and are independent of the access type of the lock being
requested.

7.12.1

Any resource which supports the LOCK method MUST, at minimum,
support the XML request and response formats defined herein.

7.10.1 Operation

A LOCK method invocation creates the lock specified by the lockinfo
XML element on the Request-URI. Lock method requests SHOULD have a
XML request body which contains an owner XML element for this lock

Goland et al. [Page 40]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

request, unless this is a refresh request. The LOCK request MAY may have
a Timeout header.

A successful response to a lock invocation MUST include Lock-Token
and Timeout headers.

Clients MUST assume that locks may arbitrarily disappear at any
time, regardless of the value given in the Timeout header. The
Timeout header only indicates the behavior of the server if
"extraordinary" circumstances do not occur. For example, an
administrator may remove a lock at any time or the system may crash
in such a way that it loses the record of the lock's existence. The
response MUST also contain the value of the lockdiscovery property in a
prop XML element.

7.12.2

7.10.2 The Effect of Locks on Properties and Collections

The scope of a lock is the entire state of the resource, including
its body and associated properties. As a result, a lock on a
resource MUST also locks lock the resource's properties.

For collections, a lock also affects the ability to add or remove
members. The nature of the effect depends upon the type of access
control involved.

7.12.3

7.10.3 Locking Replicated Resources

Some servers automatically replicate resources across multiple URLs.
In such a circumstance the server MAY MUST only accept a lock on one of
the URLs if the server can guarantee that the lock will be honored
across all the URLs.

7.12.4

7.10.4 Depth and Locking

The Depth header MAY may be used with the LOCK method. Values other
than 0 or infinity MUST NOT be used with the Depth header on a LOCK
method. All resources that support the LOCK method MUST support the
Depth header.

A Depth header of value 0 means to just lock the resource specified
by the request-URI.

If the Depth header is set to infinity then the resource specified
in the request-URI along with all its internal members, all the way
down the hierarchy, are to be locked. A successful result will MUST
return a single lock token which represents all the resources that
have been locked. If an UNLOCK is successfully executed on this
token, all

Goland et al. [Page 43]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998 associated resources are unlocked. If the lock cannot be
granted to all resources, a 409 Conflict status code MUST be
returned with a response entity body containing a multistatus XML
element describing which resource(s) prevented the lock from being
granted. Hence, partial success is not an option. Either the
entire hierarchy is locked or no resources are locked.

7.12.5

Goland et al. [Page 41]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

If no depth header is submitted on a LOCK request then the request
MUST act as if a Depth of infinity had been submitted.

7.10.5 Interaction with other Methods

The interaction of a LOCK with various methods is dependent upon the
lock type. However, independent of lock type, a successful DELETE
of a resource MUST cause all of its locks to be removed.

7.12.6

7.10.6 Lock Compatibility Table

The table below describes the behavior that occurs when a lock
request is made on a resource.

Current lock state/ Shared Lock Exclusive
Lock request Lock

None True True

Shared Lock True False

Exclusive Lock False False*

Legend: True = lock MAY may be granted. False = lock MUST NOT be
granted. *=if the principal requesting the lock is the owner of the
lock, the lock MUST must be regranted. refreshed.

The current lock state of a resource is given in the leftmost
column, and lock requests are listed in the first row. The
intersection of a row and column gives the result of a lock request.
For example, if a shared lock is held on a resource, and an
exclusive lock is requested, the table entry is "false", indicating
the lock must not be granted.

If an exclusive or shared lock is re-requested by the principal who
owns the lock, the lock MUST be regranted. If the lock is
regranted, the same lock token that was previously issued MUST be
returned.

7.12.7 Lock Response

A successful refreshed.

7.10.7 Status Codes

200 Success - The lock response MUST contain a Lock-Token response
header, a Timeout header request succeeded and a prop XML element in the response body
which contains the value of the
lockdiscovery property.

7.12.8 Status Codes

Goland et al. [Page 44]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998 property is included in the body.

412 Precondition Failed - The included Lock-Token lock token was not
enforceable on this resource or the server could not satisfy the
request in the lockinfo XML element.

425

423 Locked - The resource is locked, so the method has been
rejected.

7.12.9

Goland et al. [Page 42]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

7.10.8 Example - Simple Lock Request

>>Request

LOCK /workspace/webdav/proposal.doc HTTP/1.1
Host: webdav.sb.aol.com
Timeout: Infinite, Second-4100000000
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xyz
Authorization: Digest username="ejw",
realm="ejw@webdav.sb.aol.com", nonce="...",
uri="/workspace/webdav/proposal.doc",
response="...", opaque="..."

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<D:lockinfo>
<D:locktype><D:write/></D:locktype>

<D:lockscope><D:exclusive/></D:lockscope>
<D:locktype><D:write/></D:locktype>
<D:owner>
<D:href>http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/contact.html</D:href>
</D:owner>
</D:lockinfo>

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Lock-Token: <opaquelocktoken:e71d4fae-5dec-22d6-fea5-00a0c91e6be4>
Timeout: Second-604800
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href ="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name ="DAV:" as="D"?>
<D:prop>
<D:lockdiscovery>
<D:activelock>
<D:locktype><D:write/></D:locktype>
<D:lockscope><D:exclusive/></D:lockscope>
<D:depth>Infinity</D:depth>
<D:owner>
<D:href>http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/contact.html</D:href>
<D:href>
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/contact.html
</D:href>
</D:owner>
<D:timeout>Second-604800</D:timeout>
<D:locktoken>

Goland et al. [Page 45]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
<D:href>
opaquelocktoken:e71d4fae-5dec-22d6-fea5-00a0c91e6be4
</D:href>
</D:locktoken>
</D:activelock>
</D:lockdiscovery>
</D:prop>

Goland et al. [Page 43]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

This example shows the successful creation of an exclusive write
lock on resource
http://webdav.sb.aol.com/workspace/webdav/proposal.doc. The
resource http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/contact.html contains contact
information for the owner of the lock. The server has an activity-
based timeout policy in place on this resource, which causes the
lock to automatically be removed after 1 week (604800 seconds). The
response has a Lock-Token header that gives the lock token URL that
uniquely identifies the lock created by this lock request.
Note that the nonce, response, and opaque fields have not been
calculated in the Authorization request header.

7.12.10

7.10.9 Example - Refreshing a Write Lock

>>Request

LOCK /workspace/webdav/proposal.doc HTTP/1.1
Host: webdav.sb.aol.com
Timeout: Infinite, Second-4100000000
Lock-Token: <opaquelocktoken:e71d4fae-5dec-22d6-fea5-00a0c91e6be4>
If: (<opaquelocktoken:e71d4fae-5dec-22d6-fea5-00a0c91e6be4>)
Authorization: Digest username="ejw",
realm="ejw@webdav.sb.aol.com", nonce="...",
uri="/workspace/webdav/proposal.doc",
response="...", opaque="..."

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Lock-Token: <opaquelocktoken:e71d4fae-5dec-22d6-fea5-00a0c91e6be4>
Timeout: Second-604800
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href ="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<D:prop>
<D:lockdiscovery>
<D:activelock>
<D:locktype><D:write/></D:locktype>
<D:lockscope><D:exclusive/></D:lockscope>
<D:depth>Infinity</D:depth>
<D:owner>
<D:href>http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/contact.html</D:href>
<D:href>
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/contact.html
</D:href>
</D:owner>
<D:timeout>Second-604800</D:timeout>

Goland et al. [Page 46]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
<D:locktoken>
<D:href>
opaquelocktoken:e71d4fae-5dec-22d6-fea5-00a0c91e6be4
</D:href>
</D:locktoken>
</D:activelock>
</D:lockdiscovery>
</D:prop>

Goland et al. [Page 44]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

This request would refresh the lock, resetting any time outs.
Notice that the client asked for an infinite time out but the server
choose to ignore the request. In this example, the nonce, response,
and opaque fields have not been calculated in the Authorization
request header.

7.12.11

7.10.10 Example - Multi-Resource Lock Request

>>Request

LOCK /webdav/ HTTP/1.1
Host: webdav.sb.aol.com
Timeout: Infinite, Second-4100000000
Depth: infinity
Authorization: Digest username="ejw",
realm="ejw@webdav.sb.aol.com", nonce="...",
uri="/workspace/webdav/proposal.doc",
response="...", opaque="..."

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<D:lockinfo>
<D:locktype><D:write/></D:locktype>
<D:lockscope><D:exclusive/></D:lockscope>
<D:owner>
<D:href>http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/contact.html</D:href>
</D:owner>
</D:lockinfo>

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 207 Multistatus Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<D:multistatus>
<D:response>
<D:href>http://webdav.sb.aol.com/webdav/proposal.doc</D:href>
<D:href>http://webdav.sb.aol.com/webdav/</D:href>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 424 Method Failure</D:status>
</D:response>

Goland et al. [Page 47]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

<D:response>
<D:href>http://webdav.sb.aol.com/webdav/secret</D:href>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden</D:status>
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>

This example shows a request for an exclusive write lock on a
collection and all its children. In this request, the client has
specified that it desires an infinite length lock, if available,
otherwise a timeout of 4.1 billion seconds, if available. The
request entity body contains the contact information for the
principal taking out the lock, in this case a web page URL.

The 424 Method Failure indicates that a lock was not taken out on
these resources due to an error elsewhere. Note that this does not
mean that a lock would have succeeded on these resources had the
other error not occurred. It only means that another error has
occurred and so the entire method has been aborted.

Goland et al. [Page 45]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

The error is a 403 Forbidden response on the resource
http://webdav.sb.aol.com/webdav/secret. Because this resource could
not be locked, none of the resources were locked.

In this example, the nonce, response, and opaque fields have not
been calculated in the Authorization request header.

7.13

7.11 UNLOCK Method

The UNLOCK method removes the lock identified by the lock token in
the Lock-Token request header from the Request-URI, and all other
resources included in the lock. lock. If all resources which have been
locked under the submitted lock token can not be unlocked then the
UNLOCK request MUST fail.

Any DAV compliant resource which supports the LOCK method MUST
support the UNLOCK method.

7.13.1

7.11.1 Example

>>Request

UNLOCK /workspace/webdav/info.doc HTTP/1.1
Host: webdav.sb.aol.com
Lock-Token:<opaquelocktoken:a515cfa4-5da4-22e1-f5b5-00a0451e6bf7>
Lock-Token: (<opaquelocktoken:a515cfa4-5da4-22e1-f5b5-00a0451e6bf7>)
Authorization: Digest username="ejw",
realm="ejw@webdav.sb.aol.com", nonce="...",
uri="/workspace/webdav/proposal.doc",
response="...", opaque="..."

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content

Goland et al. [Page 48]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

In this example, the lock identified by the lock token
"opaquelocktoken:a515cfa4-5da4-22e1-f5b5-00a0451e6bf7" is
successfully removed from the resource
http://webdav.sb.aol.com/workspace/webdav/info.doc. If this lock
included more than just one resource, the lock is removed from all
resources included in the lock. The 204 status code is used instead
of 200 OK because there is no response entity body.

In this example, the nonce, response, and opaque fields have not
been calculated in the Authorization request header.

Goland et al. [Page 46]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

8 HTTP Headers for Distributed Authoring

8.1 Collection-Member Header

CollectionMember = "Collection-Member" ":" absoluteURI ;
absoluteURI is defined in section 3.2.1 of [Fielding et al., 1997]

The Collection-Member header specifies the URI of an external
resource to be added/deleted to/from a collection.

8.2 DAV Header

DAV = "DAV" ":" ["1"] "1" [",2"] ["," 1#extend]

This header indicates that the resource supports the DAV schema and
protocol as specified. All DAV compliant resources MUST return the
DAV header on all OPTIONS responses.

The value is a list of all compliance classes that the resource
supports. Note that above a comma has already been added to the 2.
This is because a resource can not be level 2 compliant unless it is
also level 1 compliant. Please refer to Section 13 section 14 for more details.
In general, however, support for one compliance class does not
entail support for any other.

8.3

8.2 Depth Header

Depth = "Depth" ":" ("0" | "1" | "infinity")

The Depth header is used with methods executed on resources which
could potentially have internal members to indicate whether the
method is to be applied only to the resource (Depth = 0), to the
resource and its immediate children, (Depth = 1), or the resource
and all its progeny (Depth = infinity).

The Depth header is only supported if a method's definition
explicitly provides for such support.

The following rules are the default behavior for any method that
supports the Depth header. A method MAY may override these defaults by
defining different behavior in its definition.

Goland et al. [Page 49]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

Methods which support the Depth header MAY may choose not to support all
of the header's values and MAY may define, on a case by case basis, the
behavior of the method if a Depth header is not present. For
example, the MOVE method only supports Depth = infinity and if a
Depth header is not present will act as if a Depth = infinity header
had been applied.

Clients MUST NOT rely upon methods executing on members of their
hierarchies in any particular order or on the execution being
atomic. Note that methods MAY provide guarantees on ordering and
atomicity. atomic
unless the particular method explicitly provides such guarantees.

Upon execution, a method with a Depth header will perform as much of
its assigned task as possible and then return a response specifying
what it was able to accomplish and what it failed to do.

So, for example, an attempt to COPY a hierarchy may result in some
of the members being copied and some not.

Goland et al. [Page 47]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

Any headers on a method with that has a defined interaction with the
Depth header MUST be applied to all resources in the scope of the method.
method except where alternative behavior is explicitly defined. For
example, an If-Match header will have its value applied against
every resource in the method's scope and will cause the method to
fail if the header fails to match.

If a resource, source or destination, within the scope of the method
with a depth header is locked in such a way as to prevent the
successful execution of the method, then the lock token for that
resource MUST be submitted with the request in the Lock-Token If request
header.

The Depth header only specifies the behavior of the method with
regards to internal children. If a resource does not have internal
children then the Depth header is MUST be ignored.

Please note, however, that it is always an error to submit a value
for the Depth header that is not allowed by the method's definition.
Thus submitting a "Depth: 1" on a COPY, even if the resource does
not have internal members, MUST will result in a 400 Bad Request. The
method should fail not because the resource doesn't have internal
members, but because of the illegal value in the header.

8.4

8.3 Destination Header

Destination = "Destination" ":" URI

The Destination header specifies a destination resource for methods
such as COPY and MOVE, which take two URIs as parameters.

8.5 If-None-State-Match

If-None-State-Match

8.4 If Header

If = "If-None-State-Match" "If" ":" 1#Coded-URL

Goland et al. [Page 50]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

Coded-URL ( 1*No-tag-list | 1*Tagged-list)
No-tag-list = List
Tagged-list = Resource 1*List
Resource = Coded-url
List = "(" 1*(["Not"](State-token | "[" entity-tag "]")) ")"
State-token = Coded-url
Coded-url = "<" URI ">"

The If-None-State-Match If header is intended to have similar functionality to the If-None-Match If-
Match header defined in section 14.26 14.25 of [Fielding et al., 1997].
However the If-None-State-Match If header is intended for use with any URI which
represents state information
about a resource, information, referred to as a state token. token, about a
resource as well as e-tags. A typical example of a state token is a
lock token.

If any of the state token, and lock tokens identifies are the current only state of the
resource, the server tokens defined in
this specification.

All DAV compliant resources MUST NOT perform honor the requested method.
Instead, if If header.

Goland et al. [Page 48]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

The If header's purpose is to describe a series of state lists. If
the request method was GET, HEAD, or PROPFIND, state of the
server SHOULD respond with a 304 Not Modified response, including resource to which the cache-related entity-header fields (particularly ETag) header is applied does not
match any of the
current specified state of lists then the resource. For all other request methods, the
server MUST respond fail
with a status of 412 Precondition Failed. If none one of the described state tokens identifies lists
matches the current state of the
resource, the server MAY perform resource then the requested method. request may succeed.

8.4.1 No-tag-list Production

The No-tag-list production describes a series of state tokens and e-
tags. If any multiple No-tag-list productions are used then only one
needs to match the state of the tokens is not recognized, resource for the method MUST fail with to be
allowed to continue.

If a
412 Precondition Failed.

Note that the "AND" and "OR" keywords specified with method, due to the If-State-
Match header are intentionally not defined for If-None-State-Match,
because this functionality is not required.

8.6 If-State-Match

If-State-Match = "If-State-Match" ":" ("AND" | "OR") 1#Coded-URL

The If-State-Match header presence of a Depth or Destination header,
is intended applied to have similar functionality multiple resources then the No-tag-list production
MUST be applied to each resource the If-Match method is applied to.

For example:

If: (<locktoken:a-write-lock-token> ["I am an e-tag"]) (["I am
another e-tag"])

The previous header defined in section 14.25 would require that any resources within the
scope of [Fielding et al.,
1997]. However the If-State-Match header is intended for use method must either be locked with
any URI which represents state information about a resource. A
typical example is a lock token.

If the AND keyword is used specified lock
token and all of in the state tokens identify identified by the "I am an e-tag" e-tag or in
the state identified by the second e-tag "I am another e-tag". To
put the matter more plainly one can think of the resource, then previous If header
as being in the server MAY perform form (or (and <locktoken:a-write-lock-token> ["I am
an e-tag"]) (and ["I am another e-tag"])).

8.4.2 Tagged-list Production

The tagged-list production scopes a list production. That is, it
specifies that the lists following the resource specification only
apply to the specified resource. The scope of the resource
production begins with the list production immediately following the
resource production and ends with the next resource production, if
any.

When the requested
method. If the OR keyword header is used and any of the state tokens
identifies applied to a particular resource, the current state Tagged-
list productions MUST be searched to determine if any of the resource, then listed
resources match the server MAY
perform operand resource(s) for the requested current method. If
none of the keyword requirement for the
keyword used is not met, resource productions match the server MUST NOT perform current resource then the requested
method, and
header MUST return a 412 Precondition Failed response. be ignored. If any one of the tokens is not recognized, the method MUST fail with a
412 Precondition Failed.

8.7 Lock-Token Request Header

Goland et al. [Page 51]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

Lock-Token = "Lock-Token" ":" 1#Coded-URL

The Lock-Token request header, containing a lock token owned by the
requesting principal, is used by the principal to indicate that the
principal is aware of resource productions does
match the existence name of the lock specified by the
lock token.

If resource under consideration then the list
productions following conditions are met:

1) The method is restricted by a lock type that requires the
submission of a lock token, such as a write lock,
2) The user-agent has authenticated itself as a given principal,
3) The user-agent is submitting a method request resource production MUST be applied to a the
resource on
which in the principal owns a write lock,

Then:

1) The method request MUST include a Lock-Token header with manner specified in the lock
token, or,
2) previous section.

The method same URI MUST fail with NOT appear more than once in a 409 Conflict status code. resource production
in an If multiple resources are involved with a method, such as the MOVE
method, then header.

For example:

Goland et al. [Page 49]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

COPY /resource1 HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.bar
Destination: http://www.foo.bar/resource2
If: <http://www.foo.bar/resource1> (<locktoken:a-write-lock-token>
[W/"A weak e-tag"]) (["strong e-tag"])
<http://www.bar.bar/random>(["another strong e-tag"])

In this example http://www.foo.bar/resource1 is being copied to
http://www.foo.bar/resource2. When the lock tokens, if any, for all affected resources,
MUST method is first applied to
http://www.foo.bar/resource1, resource1 must be included in the Lock-Token request header.

For example, Program A, used state
specified by user A, takes out "(<locktoken:a-write-lock-token> [W/"A weak e-tag"])
(["strong e-tag"])", that is, it either must be locked with a write lock on
token of "locktoken:a-write-lock-token" and have a
resource. Program A then makes weak entity tag
W/"A weak e-tag" or it must have a number of PUT requests on strong entity tag "strong e-tag".

That is the
locked resource. All only success condition since the requests contain a Lock-Token request
header that includes resource
http://www.bar.bar/random never has the write lock token. Program B, also run by
User A, then proceeds to perform a PUT method applied to it (the
only other resource listed in the locked resource.
However, program B was not aware of the existence of the lock If header) and so
does

http://www.foo.bar/resource2 is not include listed in the appropriate Lock-Token request If header. The
method is rejected even though principal A

8.4.3 not Production

Every state token or e-tag is authorized to perform
the PUT. Program B can, if it so chooses, now perform lock
discovery and obtain the lock token. Note that programs A either current, and B can
perform GETs without using the Lock-Token header because hence describes
the ability
to perform state of a GET resource, or is not affected by current, and does not describe
the state of a write lock.

Having resource. The boolean operation of matching a lock token provides no special access rights. Anyone can
find out anyone else's lock state
token by performing lock discovery.
Locks are or e-tag to be enforced based upon whatever authentication
mechanism the current state of a resource thus resolves to a
true or false value. The not production is used to reverse that
value. The scope of the not production is used by the server, state-token or

entity-tag immediately following it.

If: (Not <locktoken:write1> <locktoken:write2>)

When submitted with a request, this If header requires that all
operand resources must not based on be locked with locktoken:write1 and must
be locked with locktoken:write2.

8.4.4 Matching Function

When performing If header processing, the secrecy definition of a matching
state token or entity tag is as follows.

Matching entity tag: Where the entity tag matches an entity tag
associated with that resource.

Matching state token: Where there is an exact match between the
state token values.

8.8 Lock-Token Response Header

Lock-Token = "Lock-Token" ":" 1#Coded-URL in the If a resource is successfully locked then a Lock-Token header and any state token on the resource.

8.4.5 If Header and Non-DAV Compliant Proxies

Non-DAV compliant proxies will
be returned containing not honor the lock token that represents If header, since they
will not understand the lock. If header, and HTTP requires non-understood

Goland et al. [Page 52] 50]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

If multiple lock-tokens are returned then they

headers to be ignored. When communicating with HTTP/1.1 proxies,
the "Cache-Control: no-cache" request header MUST all refer be used so as to
prevent the proxy from improperly trying to service the request from
its cache. When dealing with HTTP/1.0 proxies the "Pragma: no-
cache" request header MUST be used for the same lock. As reason.

8.5 Lock-Token Request Header

Lock-Token = "Lock-Token" ":" Coded-URL

The Lock-Token request header is used with the UNLOCK method to
identify the lock tokens all refer to be removed. The lock token in the same Lock-Token
request header MUST identify a lock that contains the resource
identified by Request-URI as a client
need only record one of them.

8.9 member.

8.6 Overwrite Header

Overwrite = "Overwrite" ":" ("T" | "F")

The Overwrite header specifies whether the server should overwrite
the state of a non-null destination resource during a COPY or MOVE.
A value of "F" states that the server MUST NOT must not perform the COPY or
MOVE operation if the state of the destination resource is non-null.
By default,
If the value of Overwrite is "T" and a client MAY omit this overwrite header from is not included in a COPY or MOVE request
then the resource MUST treat the request when its as if it has an overwrite
header of value is "T". While the Overwrite header appears to duplicate
the functionality of the If-Match: * header of HTTP/1.1, If-Match
applies only to the Request-URI, and not to the Destination of a
COPY or MOVE.

If a COPY or MOVE is not performed due to the value of the Overwrite
header, the method MUST fail with a 409 Conflict status code.

8.10

All DAV compliant resources MUST support the Overwrite header.

8.7 Status-URI Response Header

The Status-URI response header MAY may be used with the 102 Processing
status code to inform the client as to the status of a method.

Status-URI = "Status-URI" ":" *(Status-Code "<" URI ">") ; Status-
Code is defined in 6.1.1 of [Fielding et al., 1997]

The URIs listed in the header are source resources which have been
affected by the outstanding method. The status code indicates the
resolution of the method on the identified resource. So, for
example, if a MOVE method on a collection is outstanding and a 102
"Processing" response with a Status-URI response header is returned,
the included URIs will indicate resources that have had move
attempted on them and what the result was.

8.11

Goland et al. [Page 51]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

8.8 Timeout Request Header

TimeOut = "Timeout" ":" 1#TimeType
TimeType = ("Second-" DAVTimeOutVal | "Infinite" | Other)
DAVTimeOutVal = 1*digit
Other = Extend field-value ; See section 4.2 of [Fielding et al.,
1997]

Clients MAY may include Timeout headers in their LOCK requests.
However, the server is not required to honor or even consider these
requests. Clients MUST NOT submit a Timeout request header with any
method other than a LOCK method.

A Timeout request header MUST contain at least one TimeType and MAY may
contain multiple TimeType entries. The purpose of listing multiple

Goland et al. [Page 53]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
TimeType entries is to indicate multiple different values and value
types that are acceptable to the client. The client lists the
TimeType entries in order of preference.

The

Timeout response header valuse MUST use a Second value, Infinite, or a
TimeType the client has indicated familiarity with. The server MAY may
assume a client is familiar with any TimeType submitted in a Timeout
header.

The "Second" TimeType specifies the number of seconds that MUST will
elapse between granting of the lock at the server, and the automatic
removal of the lock. A server MUST not generate a The timeout value for timetype "Second" MUST
NOT be greater than 2^32-1.

The timeout counter SHOULD be restarted any time an owner of the
lock sends a method to any member of the lock, including unsupported
methods, or methods which are unsuccessful. However the lock MUST
be refreshed if a refresh LOCK method is successfully received.

If the timeout expires then the lock is may be lost. Specifically Specifically, if
the server wishes to harvest the lock upon time-out, the server
SHOULD act as if an UNLOCK method was executed by the server on the
resource using the lock token of the timed-out lock, performed with
its override authority. Thus logs should be updated with the
disposition of the lock, notifications should be sent, etc., just as
they would be for an UNLOCK request.

Servers are advised to pay close attention to the values submitted
by clients, as they will be indicative of the type of activity the
client intends to perform. For example, an applet running in a
browser may need to lock a resource, but because of the instability
of the environment within which the applet is running, the applet
may be turned off without warning. As a result, the applet is
likely to ask for a relatively small timeout value so that if the
applet dies, the lock can be quickly harvested. However, a document
management system is likely to ask for an extremely long timeout
because its user may be planning on going off-line.

Goland et al. [Page 52]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

A client MUST NOT assume that just because the time-out has expired
the lock has been lost.

9 Status Code Extensions to HTTP/1.1

The following status codes are added to those defined in HTTP/1.1
[Fielding et al., 1997].

9.1 102 Processing

Methods can potentially take a long period of time to process,
especially methods that support the Depth header. In such cases the
client may time-out the connection while waiting for a response. To
prevent this the server MAY may return a 102 status code to indicate to
the client that the server is still processing the method.

Goland et al. [Page 54]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

If a method is taking longer than 20 seconds (a reasonable, but
arbitrary value) to process the server SHOULD return a 102
"Processing" response.

9.2 207 Multi-Status

The response provides status for multiple independent operations.

9.3 422 Unprocessable Entity

The server understands the content type of the request entity, but
was unable to process the contained instructions.

9.4 423 Insufficient Space on Resource Locked

The source or destination resource does not have sufficient space to record the state of
the resource after the execution of this method. a method is locked.

9.5 424 Method Failure

The method was not executed on a particular resource within its
scope because some part of the method's execution failed causing the
entire method to be aborted. For example, if a resource could not
be moved as part of a MOVE method, all the other resources would
fail with a 424 Method Failure.

9.6 425 Locked Insufficient Space on Resource

The source or destination resource of a method is locked, and either
the request did does not contain a valid Lock-Token header, or have sufficient space to record the lock
token in state of
the Lock-Token header identifies a lock held by another
principal. resource after the execution of this method.

10 Multi-Status Response

The default 207 Multi-Status response body is a text/xml HTTP entity
that contains a single XML element called multistatus, which
contains a set of XML elements called response, one for each response which contain 200,

Goland et al. [Page 53]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

300, 400, and 500 series status code codes generated during the method
invocation. 100 series status codes MUST SHOULD NOT be recorded in a
response XML element.

11 XML Element Definitions

In the section below, the final line of each section gives the
element type declaration using the format defined in [Bray, Paoli,
Sperberg-McQueen, 1998]. The "Value" field, where present, specifies
futher restrictions on the allowable contents of the XML element
using BNF (i.e., to further restrict the values of a PCDATA
element).

Goland et al. [Page 55]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

11.1 activelock XML Element

Name: activelock
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Describes a lock on a resource.

<!ELEMENT activelock (locktype, lockscope, depth?, owner, timeout,
locktoken) (lockscope, locktype, depth, owner?, timeout?,
locktoken?) >

11.1.1 depth XML Element

Name: depth
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: The value of the depth header used to create a lock.
Description: If this element is not included in a lockinfo element
then the client MUST assume that the lock is of depth 0.
Value: "0" | "infinity"

<!ELEMENT depth (#PCDATA) >

11.1.2 locktoken XML Element

Name: locktoken
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: The lock token associated with a lock.
Description: The href contains an one or more opaque lock token URI URIs
which all refer to the same lock (i.e., the OpaqueLockToken-URI
production in Section 4.4). section 5.4).

<!ELEMENT locktoken (href) (href*) >

11.1.3 timeout XML Element

Name: timeout
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: The timeout associated with a lock
Value: TimeType ;Defined in section 8.8

<!ELEMENT timeout (#PCDATA) >

Goland et al. [Page 54]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

11.2 collection XML Element

Name: collection
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Identifies the associated resource as a collection. The
resourcetype property of a collection resource MUST have this value.

<!ELEMENT collection EMPTY >

11.3 href XML Element

Name: href

Goland et al. [Page 56]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Identifies the content of the element as a URI.
Value: URI ; See section 3.2.1 of [Fielding et al., 1997]

<!ELEMENT href (#PCDATA)>

11.4 link XML Element

Name: link
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Identifies the property as a link and contains the
source and destination of that link.
Description: The link XML element is used to provide the sources and
destinations of a link. The name of the property containing the
link XML element provides the type of the link. Link is a multi-
valued element, so multiple links may be used together to indicate
multiple links with the same type. The values in the href XML
elements inside the src and dst XML elements of the link XML element
MUST NOT be rejected if they point to resources which do not exist.

<!ELEMENT link (src+, dst+) >

11.4.1 dst XML Element

Name: dst
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Indicates the destination of a link
Value: URI

<!ELEMENT dst (#PCDATA) >

11.4.2 src XML Element

Name: src
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Indicates the source of a link.
Value: URI

<!ELEMENT src (#PCDATA) >

Goland et al. [Page 55]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

11.5 lockentry XML Element

Name: lockentry
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Defines the types of locks that can be used with the
resource.

<!ELEMENT lockentry (lockscope, locktype) >

11.6 lockinfo XML Element

Name: lockinfo
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/

Goland et al. [Page 57]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998 DAV:
Purpose: The lockinfo XML element is used with a LOCK method to
specify the type of lock the client wishes to have created.

<!ELEMENT lockinfo (lockscope, locktype, owner?) >

11.7 lockscope XML Element

Name: lockscope
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Specifies whether a lock is an exclusive lock, or a
shared lock.

<!ELEMENT lockscope (exclusive | shared) >

11.7.1 exclusive XML Element

Name: exclusive
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Specifies an exclusive lock

<!ELEMENT exclusive EMPTY >

11.7.2 shared XML Element

Name: shared
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Specifies a shared lock

<!ELEMENT shared EMPTY >

11.8 locktype XML Element

Name: locktype
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Specifies the access type of a lock. At present, this
specification only defines one lock type, the write lock.

<!ELEMENT locktype (write) >

Goland et al. [Page 56]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

11.8.1 write XML Element

Name: write
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Specifies a write lock.

<!ELEMENT write EMPTY >

11.9 multistatus XML Element

Name: multistatus
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Contains multiple response messages.

Goland et al. [Page 58]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
Description: The responsedescription at the top level is used to
provide a general message describing the overarching nature of the
response. If this value is available an application MAY may use it
instead of presenting the individual response descriptions contained
within the responses.

<!ELEMENT multistatus (response+, responsedescription?) >

11.9.1 response XML Element

Name: response
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Holds a single response describing the effect of a
method on resource and/or its properties.
Description: A particular href MUST NOT appear more than once as the
child of a response XML element under a multistatus XML element.
This requirement is necessary in order to keep processing costs for
a response to linear time. Essentially, this prevents having to
search in order to group together all the responses by href. There
are, however, no requirements regarding ordering based on href
values.

<!ELEMENT response (href, ((href*, status)|(propstat+)),
responsedescription?) >

11.9.1.1 propstat XML Element

Name: propstat
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Groups together a prop and status element that is
associated with a particular href element.
Description: Prop The propstat XML element MUST contain one or more empty
prop XML elements representing the names of properties. Multiple
properties may be included if the same response applies to them all.

<!ELEMENT propstat (prop, (prop*, status) >

Goland et al. [Page 57]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

11.9.1.2 status XML Element

Name: status
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Holds a single HTTP status-line
Value: status-line ;status-line defined in [Fielding et al.,
1997]

<!ELEMENT status (#PCDATA) >

11.9.2 responsedescription XML Element

Name: responsedescription
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/

Goland et al. [Page 59]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998 DAV:
Purpose: Contains a message that can be displayed to the user
explaining the nature of the response.
Description: This XML element provides information suitable to be
presented to a user.

<!ELEMENT responsedescription (#PCDATA) >

11.10 owner XML Element

Name: owner
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Provides information about the principal taking out a
lock.
Description: The owner XML element provides information sufficient
for either directly contacting a principal (such as a telephone
number or Email URI), or for discovering the principal (such as the
URL of a homepage) who owns a lock.

<!ELEMENT owner (#PCDATA, ANY)* > ANY>

11.11 prop XML element

Name: prop
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Contains properties related to a resource.
Description: The prop XML element is a generic container for
properties defined on resources. All elements inside a prop XML
element MUST define properties related to the resource. No other
elements may be used inside of a prop element.

<!ELEMENT prop ANY>

11.12 propertybehavior XML element

Name: propertybehavior
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:

Purpose: Specifies how properties are handled during a COPY or
MOVE.

Goland et al. [Page 58]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

Description: The propertybehavior XML element specifies how
properties are handled during a COPY or MOVE. If this XML element
is not included in the request body then the server is expected to
act as defined by the default property handling behavior of the
associated method. All WebDAV compliant resources MUST support the
propertybehavior XML element.

<!ELEMENT propertybehavior (omit | keepalive) >

11.12.1 keepalive XML element

Name: keepalive
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Specifies requirements for the copying/moving of live
properties.

Goland et al. [Page 60]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
Description: If a list of URIs is included as the value of keepalive
then the named properties MUST be "live" after they are copied
(moved) to the destination resource of a COPY (or MOVE). If the
value "*" is given for the keepalive XML element, this designates
that all live properties on the source resource MUST be live on the
destination. If the requirements specified by the keepalive element
can not be honored then the method MUST fail with a 412 Precondition
Failed. All DAV compliant resources MUST support the keepalive XML
element for use with the COPY and MOVE methods.
Value: "*" ; #PCDATA value can only be "*"

<!ELEMENT keepalive (#PCDATA | href+) >

11.12.2 omit XML element

Name: omit
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Indicates that the associated method MAY succeed even if The omit XML element instructs the server is not able that it should
use best effort to copy/move every copy properties but a failure to copy a property on
MUST NOT cause the source
resource, even in a dead form. method to fail.
Description: The default behavior for a COPY or MOVE is to copy/move
all properties or fail the method. In certain circumstances, such
as when a server copies a resource over another protocol such as
FTP, it may not be possible to copy/move the properties associated
with the resource. Thus any attempt to copy/move over FTP would
always have to fail because properties could not be moved over, even
as dead properties. The omit XML element instructs the server that
it should use best effort to copy properties but a failure to copy a
property should not cause over, even
as dead properties. All DAV compliant resources MUST support the method to fail.
omit XML element on COPY/MOVE methods.

<!ELEMENT omit EMPTY >

11.13 propertyupdate XML element

Name: propertyupdate
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Contains a request to alter the properties on a
resource.

Goland et al. [Page 59]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

Description: This XML element is a container for the information
required to modify the properties on the resource. This XML element
is multi-valued.

<!ELEMENT propertyupdate (remove | set)+ >

11.13.1 remove XML element

Name: remove
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Lists the DAV properties to be removed from a resource.
Description: Remove instructs that the properties specified in prop
should be removed. Specifying the removal of a property that does
not exist is not an error. All the XML elements in a prop XML
element inside of a remove XML element MUST be empty, as only the

names of properties to be removed are required.

<!ELEMENT remove (prop) >

Goland et al. [Page 61]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

11.13.2 set XML element

Name: set
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Lists the DAV property values to be set for a resource.
Value: prop
Description: This The set XML element MUST contain only a prop XML
element. The elements contained by the prop XML element inside the
set XML element MUST specify the name and value of properties that
are set on the Request-URI. If a property already exists then its
value is replaced.

<!ELEMENT set (prop) >

11.14 propfind XML Element

Name: propfind
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Specifies the properties to be returned from a PROPFIND
method. Two special elements are specified for use with propfind,
allprop and propname. If prop is used inside propfind it MUST only
contain property names, not values.

<!ELEMENT propfind (allprop | propname | href+) prop) >

11.14.1 allprop XML Element

Name: allprop
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: The allprop XML element specifies that all property
names and values on the resource are to be returned.

<!ELEMENT allprop EMPTY >

Goland et al. [Page 60]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

11.14.2 propname XML Element

Name: propname
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: the The propname XML element specifies that only a list of
property names on the resource is to be returned.

<!ELEMENT propname EMPTY >

12 DAV Properties

For DAV properties, the name of the property is also the same as the
name of the XML element which that contains its value. In the section
below, the final line of each section gives the element type

declaration using the format defined in [Bray, Paoli, Sperberg-
McQueen, 1998]. The "Value" field, where present, specifies futher
restrictions on the allowable contents of the XML element using BNF
(i.e., to further restrict the values of a PCDATA element).

Goland et al. [Page 62]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

12.1 creationdate Property

Name: creationdate
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Records the time and date the resource was created.
Value: ;The time and date MUST be given in ISO 8601 format
defined in date-time ; See Appendix 2
Description: This The creationdate property SHOULD should be defined on all DAV
compliant resources. If present, it contains a timestamp of the
moment when the resource was created (i.e., the moment it had non-null non-
null state).

<!ELEMENT creationdate (#PCDATA) >

12.2 displayname Property

Name: displayname
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Provies Provides a name for the resource that is suitable for
presentation to a user.
Description: This The displayname property SHOULD should be defined on all DAV
compliant resources. If present, the property contains a
description of the resource that is suitable for presentation to a
user.

<!ELEMENT displayname (#PCDATA) >

12.3 externalmembers Property

Name: externalmembers
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/
Purpose: Provides the list of external members defined on the
resource.
Description: This property MUST be defined on any DAV compliant
resource with external members. If defined it MUST contain the full
list of external members. Resources MAY make this property read-
only, thus only allowing its value to be altered using the
ADDREF/DELREF methods.

<!ELEMENT externalmembers (href*) >

12.4 getcontentlanguage Property

Name: getcontentlanguage
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Contains the Content-Language header returned by a GET
without accept headers

Goland et al. [Page 61]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

Description: This The getcontentlanguage property MUST be defined on any
DAV compliant resource which supports GET, with the exception that if no Content-
Language returns the Content-Language header is available, this property MUST NOT exist. on a
GET.
Value: language-tag ;language-tag is defined in section 14.13
of [Fielding et al., 1997]

Goland et al. [Page 63]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

<!ELEMENT getcontentlanguage (#PCDATA) >

12.5

12.4 getcontentlength Property

Name: getcontentlength
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Contains the Content-Length header returned by a GET
without accept headers. If no Content-Length header is available,
this property MUST NOT exist.
Description: This The getcontentlength property MUST be defined on any
DAV compliant resource which that returns the Content-Length header in
response to a GET.
Value: content-length ; see section 14.14 of [Fielding et al.,
1997]

<!ELEMENT getcontentlength (#PCDATA) >

12.6

12.5 getcontenttype Property

Name: getcontenttype
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Contains the Content-Type header returned by a GET
without accept headers. If no Content-Type header is available,
this property MUST NOT exist.
Description: This getcontenttype property MUST be defined on any DAV
compliant resource which that returns the Content-Type header in response
to a GET.
Value: media-type ; defined in Section section 3.7 of [Fielding et
al., 1997]

<!ELEMENT getcontenttype (#PCDATA) >

12.7

12.6 getetag Property

Name: getetag
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:

Purpose: Contains the ETag header returned by a GET without
accept headers.
Description: Note that the ETag on a resource may reflect changes in
any part of the state of the resource, not necessarily just a change
to the response to the GET method. For example, a change to a
resource's access permissions may cause the ETag to change. This The
getetag property MUST be defined on any DAV compliant resource which that
returns the Etag header in response to a GET, except for the case if no ETag
header is returned, this property MUST NOT exist. GET.
Value: entity-tag ; defined in Section section 3.11 of [Fielding et
al., 1997]

<!ELEMENT getetag (#PCDATA) >

12.8 getlastmodified Property

Name: getlastmodified

Goland et al. [Page 64] 62]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

12.7 getlastmodified Property

Name: getlastmodified
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Contains the Last-Modified header returned by a GET
method without accept headers.
Description: Note that the last-modified date on a resource may
reflect changes in any part of the state of the resource, not
necessarily just a change to the response to the GET method. For
example, a change in a property may cause the last-modified date to
change. This The getlastmodified property MUST be defined on any DAV
compliant resource
which that returns the Last-Modified header in response
to a GET, except
for the case if no Last-Modified header is returned, this property
MUST NOT exist. GET.
Value: HTTP-date ; defined in Section section 3.3.1 of [Fielding et
al., 1997]

<!ELEMENT getlastmodified (#PCDATA) >

12.9

12.8 lockdiscovery Property

Name: lockdiscovery
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Describes the active locks on a resource
Description: The lockdiscovery property returns a listing of who has
a lock, what type of lock he has, the timeout type and the time
remaining on the timeout, and the associated lock token. The server
is free to withhold any or all of this information if the requesting
principal does not have sufficient access rights to see the
requested data. A server which supports locks MUST provide the
lockdiscovery property on any resource with locks on it.

<!ELEMENT lockdiscovery (activelock)* >

12.9.1

12.8.1 Example

>>Request

PROPFIND /container/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.bar
Content-Length: xxxx
Content-Type: text/xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<D:propfind>
<D:prop><lockdiscovery/></D:prop>
<D:prop><D:lockdiscovery/></D:prop>
</D:propfind>

Goland et al. [Page 63]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx

Goland et al. [Page 65]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href ="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<D:multistatus>
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<D:lockdiscovery>
<D:activelock>
<D:locktype>write</D:locktype>
<D:lockscope>exclusive</D:lockscope>
<D:Depth>0</D:Depth>
<D:locktype><D:write/></D:locktype>
<D:lockscope><D:exclusive/></D:lockscope>
<D:depth>0</D:depth>
<D:owner>Jane Smith</D:owner>
<D:timeout>Infinite</D:timeout>
<D:locktoken>
<D:href>
opaquelocktoken:f81de2ad-7f3d-a1b2-4f3c-00a0c91a9d76
</D:href>
</D:locktoken>
</D:activelock>
</D:lockdiscovery>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>

This resource has a single exclusive write lock on it, with an
infinite timeout. Note that the Depth element could have been
omitted as 0 is the default value of Depth.

12.10

12.9 resourcetype Property

Name: resourcetype
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: Specifies the nature of the resource.
Description: This The resourcetype property MUST be defined on all DAV
compliant resources. The default value is empty.

<!ELEMENT resourcetype ANY >

12.11

12.10 source Property

Name: source
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/link/ DAV:
Purpose: The destination of the source link identifies the
resource that contains the unprocessed source of the link's source.

Goland et al. [Page 64]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

Description: The source of the link (src) is typically the URI of
the output resource on which the link is defined, and there is
typically only one destination (dst) of the link, which is the URI
where the unprocessed source of the resource may be accessed. When
more than one link destination exists, this specification asserts no
policy on ordering.

Goland et al. [Page 66]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

<!ELEMENT source (link)* >

12.11.1

12.10.1 Example

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.foocorp.com/Project/"
<?xml:namespace name="http://www.foocorp.com/Project/" as="F"?>
<D:prop>
<D:source>
<D:link>
<F:projfiles>Source</F:projfiles>
<D:src>http://foo.bar/program</D:src>
<D:dst>http://foo.bar/src/main.c</D:dst>
</D:link>
<D:link>
<F:projfiles>Library</F:projfiles>
<D:src>http://foo.bar/program</D:src>
<D:dst>http://foo.bar/src/main.lib</D:dst>
</D:link>
<D:link>
<F:projfiles>Makefile</F:projfiles>
<D:src>http://foo.bar/program</D:src>
<D:dst>http://foo.bar/src/makefile</D:dst>
</D:link>
</D:source>
</D:prop>

In this example the resource http://foo.bar/program has a source
property that contains three links. Each link contains three
elements, two of which, src and dst, are part of the DAV schema
defined in this document, and one which is defined by the schema
http://www.foocorp.com/project/ (Source, Library, and Makefile). A
client which only implements the elements in the DAV spec will not
understand the foocorp elements and will ignore them, thus seeing
the expected source and destination links. An enhanced client may
know about the foocorp elements and be able to present the user with
additional information about the links. This example demonstrates
the power of XML markup, allowing element values to be enhanced
without breaking older clients.

12.12

Goland et al. [Page 65]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

12.11 supportedlock Property

Name: supportedlock
Namespace: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ DAV:
Purpose: To provide a listing of the lock capabilities supported
by the resource.
Description: The supportedlock property of a resource returns a
listing of the combinations of scope and access types which may be
specified in a lock request on the resource. Note that the actual
contents are themselves controlled by access controls so a server is
not required to provide information the client is not authorized to

Goland et al. [Page 67]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

see. If supportedlock is available on "*" then it MUST define the
set of locks allowed on all resources on that server.

<!ELEMENT supportedlock (lockentry)* >

12.12.1

12.11.1 Example

>>Request

PROPFIND /container/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.bar
Content-Length: xxxx
Content-Type: text/xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<D:propfind>
<D:prop><supportedlock/></D:prop>
<D:prop><D:supportedlock/></D:prop>
</D:propfind>

>>Response

HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: xxxxx

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href ="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/"
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<D:multistatus>
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.foo.bar/container/</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<D:supportedlock>
<D:LockEntry>
<D:locktype><D:Write/></D:locktype>
<D:lockscope><D:Exclusive/></D:lockscope>
</D:LockEntry>
<D:LockEntry>
<D:locktype><D:Write/></D:locktype>
<D:lockscope><D:Shared/></D:lockscope>
</D:LockEntry>
<D:lockentry>
<D:lockscope><D:exclusive/></D:lockscope>
<D:locktype><D:write/></D:locktype>
</D:lockentry>
<D:lockentry>
<D:lockscope><D:shared/></D:lockscope>
<D:locktype><D:write/></D:locktype>
</D:lockentry>

Goland et al. [Page 66]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

</D:supportedlock>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>

13 DAV XML Processing Instructions

All DAV compliant resources MUST ignore any unknown XML element and
all its children encountered while processing a DAV method that uses
XML as its command language.

This restriction also applies to the processing, by clients, of DAV
property values where unknown XML elements SHOULD be ignored unless
the property's schema declares otherwise.

This restriction does not apply to setting dead DAV properties on
the server where the server MUST record unknown XML elements.

Additionally, this restriction does not apply to the use of XML
where XML happens to be the content type of the entity body, for
example, when used as the body of a PUT.

14 DAV Compliance Classes

Goland et al. [Page 68]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

A DAV compliant resource can choose from two classes of compliance.
A client can discover the compliance classes of a resource by
executing OPTIONS on the resource, and examining the "DAV" header
which is returned.

Since this document describes extensions to the HTTP/1.1 protocol,
minimally all DAV compliant resources, clients, and proxies MUST be
compliant with [Fielding et al., 1997].

Compliance classes are not necessarily sequential. A resource that
is class 2 compliant MUST must also be class 1 compliant; but if
additional compliance classes are defined later, a resource that is
class 1, 2, and 4 compliant might not be class 3 compliant.

13.1 Also
note that identifiers other than numbers may be used as compliance
class identifiers.

14.1 Class 1

A class 1 compliant resource MUST meet all "MUST" requirements in
all sections of this document.

Class 1 compliant resources MUST return, at minimum, the value "1"
in the DAV header on all responses to the OPTIONS method.

13.2

Goland et al. [Page 67]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

14.2 Class 2

A class 2 compliant resource MUST meet all class 1 requirements and
support the supportedlock property as well as the LOCK method. It
MUST also support method, the supportedlock property, the
lockdiscovery property, since Section 12.9
specifies that the LOCK method MUST Time-Out response header and the Lock-
Token request header. A class "2" compliant resource SHOULD also
support the lockdiscovery
property. Time-Out request header and the owner XML element.

Class 2 compliant resources MUST return, at minimum, the value values "1"
and "2" in the DAV header on all responses to the OPTIONS method.

15 Internationalization Considerations

In the realm of internationalization, this specification complies
with the IETF Character Set Policy [Alvestrand, 1998]. In this
specification, human-readable fields can be found either in the
value of a property, or in an error message returned in a response
entity body. In both cases, the human-readable content is encoded
using XML, which has explicit provisions for character set tagging
and encoding, and requires that XML processors read XML elements
encoded
encoded, at minimum, using the UTF-8 and UCS-2 encodings [Yergeau, 1998] encoding of the
ISO 10646 basic multilingual plane. Furthermore, XML contains provisions for
encoding XML elements using other encoding schemes, notable among
them UCS-4, which permits encoding of characters from any ISO 10646
character plane.

The default character set encoding for XML data in this
specification, and in general, is UTF-8. WebDAV compliant
applications MUST support the UTF-8 and UCS-2 character set

Goland et al. [Page 69]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

encodings for XML elements, and SHOULD support the UCS-4 encoding.
The XML character set encoding declaration for each supported
character set MUST also be supported, since it is by using this
encoding declaration that an XML processor determines the encoding
of an element.

XML also provides a language tagging capability for specifying the
language of the contents of a particular XML element. XML uses
either IANA registered language tags (see RFC 1766, [Alvestrand,
1995]) or ISO 639 language tags [ISO-639] in the "xml:lang"
attribute of an XML element to identify the language of its content
and attributes.

WebDAV applications MUST support the character set tagging,
character set encoding, and the language tagging functionality of
the XML specification.

Names used within this specification fall into three categories:
names of protocol elements such as methods and headers, names of XML
elements, and names of properties. Naming of protocol elements
follows the precedent of HTTP, using English names encoded in
USASCII for methods and headers. Since these protocol elements are
not visible to users, and are in fact simply long token identifiers,
they do not need to support encoding in multiple character sets.
Similarly, though the names of XML elements used in this
specification are English names encoded in UTF-8, these names are
not visible to the user, and hence do not need to support multiple
character set encodings.

The name of a property defined on a resource is a URI. Although
some applications (e.g., a generic property viewer) will display
property URIs directly to their users, it is expected that the
typical application will use a fixed set of properties, and will
provide a mapping from the property name URI to a human-readable
field when displaying the property name to a user. It is only in

Goland et al. [Page 68]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

the case where the set of properties is not known ahead of time that
an application need display a property name URI to a user. We
recommend that applications provide human-readable property names
wherever feasible.

For error reporting, we follow the convention of HTTP/1.1 status
codes, including with each status code a short, English description
of the code (e.g., 425 423 Locked). While the possibility exists that a
poorly crafted user agent would display this message to a user,
internationalized applications will ignore this message, and display
an appropriate message in the user's language and character set.

Since interoperation of clients and servers does not require locale
information, this specification does not specify any mechanism for
transmission of this information.

16 Security Considerations

This section is provided to detail issues concerning security
implications of which WebDAV applications need to be aware.

Goland et al. [Page 70]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

All of the security considerations of HTTP/1.1 also apply to WebDAV.
In addition, the security risks inherent in remote authoring require
stronger authentication technology, and introduce several new privacy
concerns, and may increase the hazards from poor server design.
These issues are detailed below.

15.1

16.1 Authentication of Clients

Due to their emphasis on authoring, WebDAV servers need to use
authentication technology to protect not just access to a network
resource, but the integrity of the resource as well. Furthermore,
the introduction of locking functionality requires support for
authentication.

A password sent in the clear over an insecure channel is an
inadequate means for protecting the accessibility and integrity of a
resource as the password may be intercepted. Since Basic
authentication for HTTP/1.1 performs essentially clear text
transmission of a password, Basic authentication MUST NOT be used to
authenticate a WebDAV client to a server unless the connection is
secure. Furthermore, a WebDAV server MUST NOT send Basic
authentication credentials in a WWW-Authenticate header unless the
connection is secure. Examples of secure connections include a
Transport Layer Security (TLS) connection, or a connection over a
network which is physically secure, for example, an isolated network
in a building with restricted access.

WebDAV applications MUST support the Digest authentication scheme
[Franks,
[Franks et al., 1997]. Since Digest authentication verifies that
both parties to a communication know a shared secret, a password,
without having to send that secret in the clear, Digest

Goland et al. [Page 69]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

authentication avoids the security problems inherent in Basic
authentication while providing a level of authentication which is
useful in a wide range of scenarios.

15.2

16.2 Denial of Service

Denial of service attacks are of special concern to WebDAV servers.
WebDAV plus HTTP enables denial of service attacks on every part of
a system's resources.

The underlying storage can be attacked by PUTting extremely large
files.

Asking for recursive operations on large collections can attack
processing time.

Making multiple pipelined requests on multiple connections can
attack network connections.

Goland et al. [Page 71]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

WebDAV servers need to be aware of the possibility of a denial of
service attack at all levels.

15.3

16.3 Security through Obscurity

WebDAV provides, through the PROPFIND method, a mechanism for
listing the member resources of a collection. This greatly
diminishes the effectiveness of security or privacy techniques which that
rely only on the difficulty of discovering the names of network
resources. Users of WebDAV servers are encouraged to use access
control techniques to prevent unwanted access to resources, rather
than depending on the relative obscurity of their resource names.

15.4

16.4 Privacy Issues Connected to Locks

When submitting a lock request a user agent may also submit an owner
XML field giving contact information for the person taking out the
lock (for those cases where a person, rather than a robot, is taking
out the lock). This contact information is stored in a lockdiscovery
property on the resource, and can be used by other collaborators to
begin negotiation over access to the resource. However, in many
cases this contact information can be very private, and should not
be widely disseminated. Servers SHOULD limit read access to the
lockdiscovery property as appropriate. Furthermore, user agents
SHOULD provide control over whether contact information is sent at
all, and if contact information is sent, control over exactly what
information is sent.

15.5

16.5 Privacy Issues Connected to Properties

Since property values are typically used to hold information such as
the author of a document, there is the possibility that privacy
concerns could arise stemming from widespread access to a resource's

Goland et al. [Page 70]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

property data. To reduce the risk of inadvertent release of private
information via properties, servers are encouraged to develop access
control mechanisms that separate read access to the resource body
and read access to the resource's properties. This allows a user to
control the dissemination of their property data without overly
restricting access to the resource's contents.

15.6

16.6 Reduction of Security due to Source Link

HTTP/1.1 warns against providing read access to script code because
it may contain sensitive information. Yet WebDAV, via its source
link facility, can potentially provide a URL for script resources so
they may be authored. For HTTP/1.1, a server could reasonably
prevent access to source resources due to the predominance of read-
only access. WebDAV, with its emphasis on authoring, encourages
read and write access to source resources, and provides the source
link facility to identify the source. This reduces the security
benefits of eliminating access to source resources. Users and
administrators of WebDAV servers should be very cautious when

Goland et al. [Page 72]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
allowing remote authoring of scripts, limiting read and write access
to the source resources to authorized principals.

17 IANA Considerations

This document defines two namespaces, the namespace of property
names, and the namespace of WebDAV-specific XML elements used within
property values.

URLs are used for both names, for several reasons. Assignment of a
URL does not require a request to a central naming authority, and
hence allow WebDAV property names and XML elements to be quickly
defined by any WebDAV user or application. URLs also provide a
unique address space, ensuring that the distributed users of WebDAV
will not have collisions among the property names and XML elements
they create.

This specification defines a distinguished set of property names and
XML elements which that are understood by all WebDAV applications. The
property names and XML elements in this specification are all
derived from the base URL: http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ URI DAV: by adding a suffix to this URL, URI, for
example,
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/creationdate DAV:creationdate for the "creationdate" property.

This specification also defines a URI scheme for the encoding of
lock tokens, the opaquelocktoken URI scheme described in section
5.4.

To ensure correct interoperation of based on this specification, IANA MUST
must reserve the URL namespace URI namespaces starting with
http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/ "DAV:" and with
"opaquelocktoken:" for use by this specification, its revisions, and
related WebDAV specifications.

Goland et al. [Page 71]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

18 Terminology

Collection - A resource that contains member resources. resources and meets the
requirements in section 4 of this specification.

Member Resource - A resource contained by a collection. There are
two types of member resources: external and internal.

Internal Member Resource - A member resource of a collection whose
URI is relative to the URI of the collection.

External Member Resource - A member resource of a collection with an
absolute URI that is not relative to its parent's URI.

Property - A name/value pair that contains descriptive information
about a resource.

Live Property - A property whose semantics and syntax are enforced
by the server. For example, a live "content-length" property would
have its value, the length of the entity returned by a GET request,
automatically calculated by the server.

Goland et al. [Page 73]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998

Dead Property - A property whose semantics and syntax are not
enforced by the server. The server only records the value of a dead
property; the client is responsible for maintaining the consistency
of the syntax and semantics of a dead property.

19 Copyright

The following copyright notice is copied from RFC 2026 [Bradner,
1996], Section section 10.4, and describes the applicable copyright for this
document.

This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph
are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of

developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.

The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assignees.

This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING

Goland et al. [Page 72]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

20 Intellectual Property

The following notice is copied from RFC 2026 [Bradner, 1996],
Section
section 10.4, and describes the position of the IETF concerning
intellectual property claims made against this document.

The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to
pertain to the implementation or use other technology described in
this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it

Goland et al. [Page 74]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
has made any effort to identify any such rights. Information on the
IETF's procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and
standards-related documentation can be found in BCP-11. Copies of
claims of rights made available for publication and any assurances
of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made
to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such
proprietary rights by implementors or users of this specification
can be obtained from the IETF Secretariat.

The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
rights which may cover technology that may be required to practice
this standard. Please address the information to the IETF Executive
Director.

21 Acknowledgements

A specification such as this thrives on piercing critical review and
withers from apathetic neglect. The authors gratefully acknowledge
the contributions of the following people, whose insights were so
valuable at every stage of our work.

Terry Allen, Harald Alvestrand, Alan Babich, Sanford Barr, Dylan
Barrell, Bernard Chester, Tim Berners-Lee, Dan Connolly, Jim
Cunningham, Ron Daniel, Jr., Jim Davis, Keith Dawson, Mark Day,
Brian Deen, Martin Duerst, David Durand, Lee Farrell, Chuck Fay, Roy
Fielding, Mark Fisher, Alan Freier, George Florentine, Jim Gettys,
Phill Hallam-Baker, Dennis Hamilton, Steve Henning, Alex Hopmann,
Andre van der Hoek, Ben Laurie, Paul Leach, Ora Lassila, Karen
MacArthur, Steven Martin, Larry Masinter, Michael Mealling, Keith
Moore, Henrik Nielsen, Kenji Ota, Bob Parker, Glenn Peterson, Jon
Radoff, Saveen Reddy, Henry Sanders, Christopher Seiwald, Judith
Slein, Mike Spreitzer, Einar Stefferud, Ralph Swick, Kenji
Takahashi, Richard N. Taylor, Robert Thau, John Turner, Sankar
Virdhagriswaran, Fabio Vitali, Gregory Woodhouse, and Lauren Wood.

Goland et al. [Page 73]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

Two from this list deserve special mention. The contributions by
Larry Masinter have been invaluable, both in helping the formation
of the working group and in patiently coaching the authors along the
way. In so many ways he has set high standards we have toiled to
meet. The contributions of Judith Slein in clarifying the
requirements, and in patiently reviewing draft after draft, both
improved this specification and expanded our minds on document
management.

We would also like to thank John Turner for developing the XML DTD.

Goland et al. [Page 75] 74]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

22 References

[Alvestrand, 1995] H. T. Alvestrand, "Tags for the Identification of
Languages." RFC 1766. Uninett. March, 1995.

[Alvestrand, 1998] H. T. Alvestrand, "IETF Policy on Character Sets
and Languages." RFC XXXX, 2277, BCP YY. Maxware. 18. Uninett. January, 1998.

[Bradner, 1996] S. Bradner, "The Internet Standards Process -
Revision 3." RFC 2026, BCP 9. Harvard University. October, 1996.

[Bradner, 1997] S. Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels." RFC 2119, BCP 14. Harvard University. March,
1997.

[Bray, Hollander, Layman, 1998] T. Bray, D. Hollander, A. Layman,
"Name Spaces in XML" World Wide Web Consortium Note,
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE-xml-names.

[Bray, Paoli, Sperberg-McQueen, 1998] T. Bray, J. Paoli, C. M.
Sperberg-McQueen, "Extensible Markup Language (XML)." World Wide Web
Consortium Recommendation REC-XML-ZZZZ. http://www.w3.org/TR/PR-xml-
971208. REC-xml-19980210.
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210.

[Franks et al., 1997] J. Franks, P. Hallam-Baker, J. Hostetler, P.
Leach, A. Luotonen, E. Sink, and L. Stewart. "An Extension to HTTP :
Digest Access Authentication" RFC 2069. Northwestern University,
CERN, Spyglass Inc., Microsoft Corp., Netscape Communications Corp.,
Spyglass Inc., Open Market Inc. January 1997.

[Fielding et al., 1997] R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. Mogul, H.
Frystyk, T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1."
RFC 2068. U.C. Irvine, DEC, MIT/LCS. January, 1997.

[ISO-639] ISO (International Organization for Standardization). ISO
639:1988. "Code for the representation of names of languages."

[ISO-8601] ISO (International Organization for Standardization). ISO
8601:1988. "Data elements and interchange formats - Information
interchange - Representation of dates and times."

[Lasher, Cohen, 1995] R. Lasher, D. Cohen, "A Format for
Bibliographic Records," RFC 1807. Stanford, Myricom. June, 1995.

[Leach, Salz, 1997] 1998] P. J. Leach, R. Salz, "UUIDs and GUIDs."
Internet-draft (expired),
Internet-draft, work-in-progress, February, 1997.
http://www.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-leach-uuids-guids-
00.txt 1998.
ftp://ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-leach-uuids-guids-01.txt

[MARC, 1994] Network Development and MARC Standards, Office, ed.
1994. "USMARC Format for Bibliographic Data", 1994. Washington, DC:
Cataloging Distribution Service, Library of Congress.

Goland et al. [Page 75]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

[Miller et al., 1996] J. Miller, T. Krauskopf, P. Resnick, W.
Treese, "PICS Label Distribution Label Syntax and Communication
Protocols" Version 1.1, World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation
REC-PICS-labels-961031. http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/REC-PICS-
labels-961031.html.

[Slein et al., 1997] 1998] J. A. Slein, F. Vitali, E. J. Whitehead, Jr.,
D. Durand, "Requirements for Distributed Authoring and Versioning

Goland et al. [Page 76]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, 1998
D. Durand, "Requirements for Distributed Authoring and Versioning
Protocol for the World Wide Web." RFC XXXX. 2291. Xerox, Univ. of Bologna,
U.C. Irvine, Boston Univ. YYY, 1997. February, 1998.

[Weibel et al., 1995] S. Weibel, J. Godby, E. Miller, R. Daniel,
"OCLC/NCSA Metadata Workshop Report."
http://purl.oclc.org/metadata/dublin_core_report.

[Yergeau, 1997] 1998] F. Yergeau, "UTF-8, a transformation format of
Unicode and ISO 10646." RFC 2044. 2279. Alis Technologies. October, 1996. January, 1998.

Goland et al. [Page 76]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

23 Authors' Addresses

Y. Y. Goland
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
Email: yarong@microsoft.com

E. J. Whitehead, Jr.
Dept. Of Information and Computer Science
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-3425
Email: ejw@ics.uci.edu

A. Faizi
Netscape
685 East Middlefield Road
Mountain View, CA 94043
Email: asad@netscape.com

S. R. Carter
Novell
1555 N. Technology Way
M/S ORM F111
Orem, UT 84097-2399
Email: srcarter@novell.com

D. Jensen
Novell
1555 N. Technology Way
M/S ORM F111
Orem, UT 84097-2399
Email: dcjensen@novell.com

Goland et al. [Page 77]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

24 Appendices

24.1 Appendix 1 - WebDAV Document Type Definition

This section provides a document type definition, following the
rules in [Bray, Paoli, Sperberg-McQueen, 1998], for the XML elements
used in the protocol stream and in the values of properties. It
collects the element definitions given in sections 11 and 12.

<!DOCTYPE webdav-1.0 [

<!ELEMENT activelock (lockscope, locktype, depth, owner?, timeout?,
locktoken?) >

<!ELEMENT lockentry (lockscope, locktype) >
<!ELEMENT lockinfo (lockscope, locktype, owner?) >

<!ELEMENT locktype (write) >
<!ELEMENT write EMPTY >

<!ELEMENT lockscope (exclusive | shared) >
<!ELEMENT exclusive EMPTY >
<!ELEMENT shared EMPTY >

<!ELEMENT depth (#PCDATA) >

<!ELEMENT owner ANY >

<!ELEMENT timeout (#PCDATA) >

<!ELEMENT locktoken (href*) >

<!ELEMENT href (#PCDATA) >

<!ELEMENT link (src+, dst+) >
<!ELEMENT dst (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT src (#PCDATA) >

<!ELEMENT multistatus (response+, responsedescription?) >

<!ELEMENT response (href, ((href*, status)|(propstat+)),
responsedescription?) >
<!ELEMENT status (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT propstat (prop* status) >
<!ELEMENT responsedescription (#PCDATA) >

<!ELEMENT prop ANY >

<!ELEMENT propertybehavior (omit | keepalive) >
<!ELEMENT omit EMPTY >

Goland et al. [Page 77] 78]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

22 Authors' Addresses

Y. Y. Goland
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
Email: yarong@microsoft.com

E. J. Whitehead, Jr.
Dept. Of Information

<!ELEMENT keepalive (#PCDATA | href+) >

<!ELEMENT propertyupdate (remove | set)+ >
<!ELEMENT remove (prop) >
<!ELEMENT set (prop) >

<!ELEMENT propfind (allprop | propname | prop) >
<!ELEMENT allprop EMPTY >
<!ELEMENT propname EMPTY >

<!ELEMENT collection EMPTY >

<!ELEMENT creationdate (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT displayname (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT getcontentlanguage (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT getcontentlength (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT getcontenttype (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT getetag (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT getlastmodified (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT lockdiscovery (activelock)* >
<!ELEMENT resourcetype ANY >
<!ELEMENT source (link)* >
<!ELEMENT supportedlock (lockentry)* >

24.2 Appendix 2 - ISO 8601 Date and Computer Science
University Time Profile

The creationdate property specifies the use of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-3425
Email: ejw@ics.uci.edu

A. Faizi
Netscape
685 East Middlefield Road
Mountain View, CA 94043
Email: asad@netscape.com

S. R. Carter
Novell
1555 N. Technology Way
M/S ORM F111
Orem, UT 84097-2399
Email: srcarter@novell.com

D. Jensen
Novell
1555 N. Technology Way
M/S ORM F111
Orem, UT 84097-2399
Email: dcjensen@novell.com the ISO 8601 date
format [ISO-8601]. This section defines a profile of the ISO 8601
date format for use with this specification. This profile is quoted
verbatim from draft-newman-datetime-01.txt (expired).

date-time = full-date "T" full-time

full-date = date-fullyear "-" date-month "-" date-mday
full-time = partial-time time-offset

Goland et al. [Page 78] 79]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

23 Appendices

23.1

partial-time = time-hour ":" time-minute ":" time-second
[time-secfrac]

Numeric offsets are calculated as local time minus UTC (Coordinated
Universal Time). So the equivalent time in UTC can be determined by
subtracting the offset from the local time. For example, 18:50:00-
04:00 is the same time as 22:58:00Z.

If the time in UTC is known, but the offset to local time is
unknown, this can be represented with an offset of "-00:00". This
differs from an offset of "Z" which implies that UTC is the
preferred reference point for the specified time.

24.3 Appendix 1 3 - WebDAV Document Type Definition

This section provides Notes on Processing XML Elements

XML is a document type definition, flexible data format that makes it easy to submit data that
appears legal but in fact is not. The philosophy of "Be flexible in
what you accept and strict in what you send" still applies, but it
must not be applied inappropriately. XML is extremely flexible in
dealing with issues of white space, element ordering, inserting new
elements, etc. This flexibility does not require extension,
especially not in the area of the meaning of elements.

There is no kindness in accepting illegal combinations of XML
elements. At best it will cause an unwanted result and at worst it
can cause real damage.

24.3.1 XML Syntax Error Example

The following request body for a PROPFIND method is illegal.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<D:propfind>
<D:allprop/>
<D:propname/>
</D:propfind>

The definition of the
rules in [Bray, Paoli, Sperberg-McQueen, 1998], propfind element only allows for the XML elements
used in allprop
or the protocol stream propname element, not both. Thus the above is an error and in
must be responded to with a 400 Bad Request.

Imagine, however, that a server wanted to be "kind" and decided to
pick the values of properties. It
collects allprop element as the true element definitions given in Sections 11 and 12.

<!DOCTYPE webdav-1.0 [

<!ELEMENT activelock (locktype, lockscope, depth?, owner, timeout,
locktoken) >

<!ELEMENT lockentry (lockscope, locktype) >
<!ELEMENT lockinfo (lockscope, locktype, owner?) >

<!ELEMENT locktype (write) >
<!ELEMENT write EMPTY >

<!ELEMENT lockscope (exclusive | shared) >
<!ELEMENT exclusive EMPTY >
<!ELEMENT shared EMPTY >

<!ELEMENT depth (#PCDATA) >

<!ELEMENT owner (#PCDATA, ANY)* >

<!ELEMENT timeout (#PCDATA) >

<!ELEMENT locktoken (href) >

<!ELEMENT href (#PCDATA) >

<!ELEMENT link (src+, dst+) >
<!ELEMENT dst (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT src (#PCDATA) >

<!ELEMENT multistatus (response+, responsedescription?) >

<!ELEMENT response (href, ((href*, status)|(propstat+)),
responsedescription?) >
<!ELEMENT status (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT propstat (prop status) >
<!ELEMENT responsedescription (#PCDATA) >

<!ELEMENT prop ANY >

<!ELEMENT propertybehavior (omit | keepalive) >
<!ELEMENT omit EMPTY > respond to it. A
client running over a bandwidth limited line who intended to execute
a propname would be in for a big surprise if the server treated the
command as an allprop.

Additionally, if a server were lenient and decided to reply to this
request, the results would vary randomly from server to server, with
some servers executing the allprop directive, and others executing

Goland et al. [Page 79] 80]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

<!ELEMENT keepalive (#PCDATA | href+) >

<!ELEMENT propertyupdate (remove | set)+ >
<!ELEMENT remove (prop) >
<!ELEMENT set (prop) >

<!ELEMENT propfind (allprop | propname | href+) >
<!ELEMENT allprop EMPTY >
<!ELEMENT

the propname EMPTY >

<!ELEMENT collection EMPTY >

<!ELEMENT creationdate (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT displayname (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT externalmembers (href*) >
<!ELEMENT getcontentlanguage (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT getcontentlength (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT getcontenttype (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT getetag (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT getlastmodified (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT lockdiscovery (activelock)* >
<!ELEMENT resourcetype ANY >
<!ELEMENT source (link)* >
<!ELEMENT supportedlock (lockentry)* >

23.2 Appendix 2 - ISO 8601 Date and Time Profile directive. This reduces interoperability rather than
increasing it.

24.3.2 Unknown XML Element Example

The creationdate property specifies previous example was illegal because it contained two elements
that were explicitly banned from appearing together in the propfind
element. However, XML is an extensible language, so one can imagine
new elements being defined for use with propfind. Below is the
request body of a PROPFIND and, like the previous example, must be
rejected with a 400 Bad Request by a server that does not understand
the expired-props element.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<?xml:namespace name="http://www.foo.bar/standards/props/" as="E"?>
<D:propfind>
<E:expired-props/>
</D:propfind>

To understand why a 400 Bad Request is returned let us look at the
request body as the server unfamiliar with expired-props sees it.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<?xml:namespace name="http://www.foo.bar/standards/props/" as="E"?>
<D:propfind>
</D:propfind>

As the server does not understand the use expired-props element, by the
rules of XML, it must ignore it. Thus the ISO 8601 date
format. This section defines a profile server sees an empty
propfind, which by the definition of the ISO 8601 date format propfind element is
illegal.

Please note that had the extension been additive it would not
necessarily have resulted in a 400 Bad Request. For example,
imagine the following request body for use with this specification. This profile a PROPFIND:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml:namespace name="DAV:" as="D"?>
<?xml:namespace name="http://www.foo.bar/standards/props/" as="E"?>
<D:propfind>
<D:propname/>
<E:leave-out>*boss*</E:leave-out>
</D:propfind>

The previous example contains the fictitious element leave-out. Its
purpose is quoted verbatim
from draft-newman-datetime-01.txt (expired).

date-time = full-date "T" full-time

full-date = date-fullyear "-" date-month "-" date-mday
full-time = partial-time time-offset

date-fullyear = 4DIGIT
date-month = 2DIGIT ; 01-12
date-mday = 2DIGIT ; 01-28, 01-29, 01-30, 01-31 based on
month/year
time-hour = 2DIGIT ; 00-23
time-minute = 2DIGIT ; 00-59
time-second = 2DIGIT ; 00-59, 00-60 based on leap second rules
time-secfrac = "." 1*DIGIT
time-numoffset = ("+" / "-") time-hour ":" time-minute
time-offset = "Z" / time-numoffset to prevent the return of any property whose name matches
the submitted pattern. If the previous example were submitted to a
server unfamiliar with leave-out, the only result would be that the
leave-out element would be ignored and a propname would be executed.

Goland et al. [Page 80] 81]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

partial-time = time-hour ":" time-minute ":" time-second
[time-secfrac]

Numeric offsets are calculated

24.4 Appendix 4 -- XML Namespaces for WebDAV

[NOTE TO RFC EDITOR: If, as local time minus UTC (Coordinated
Universal Time). So the equivalent time in UTC can be determined by
subtracting the offset from expected, the local time. For example, 18:50:00-
04:00 World Wide Web Consortium
issues XML namespaces as a W3C Recommendation before this document
is the same time published as 22:58:00Z.

If an RFC (i.e., after approval by the time in UTC is known, IESG, but before
appearing in the offset to local time is
unknown, rfc directory), then the text of this can appendix must
be represented with an offset of "-00:00". This
differs from an offset changed to read:

XML namespace functionality in this specification MUST conform to
W3C Recommendation, "Name Spaces in XML" REC-XML-NAMES-1998????.
]

24.4.1 Introduction

To provide a unique space of "Z" XML element names which implies that UTC is the
preferred has
decentralized extensibility, this specification uses a feature of
XML known as XML "namespaces". This appendix provides a normative
reference point for the specified time.

23.3 Appendix 3 - Notes on Processing XML Elements namespace functionality for implementations of
this specification. All DAV compliant systems MUST support the XML is a flexible data format that makes it easy to submit data that
appears legal but
namespace extension as specified in fact is not. this appendix."

The philosophy remainder of "Be flexible this appendix is intended to match, as closely as
needed, the text in
what you accept Note-xml-names-19980119, "Name Spaces in XML",
edited by Tim Bray, Dave Hollander, and strict Andrew Layman,
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE-xml-names. To meet this goal, the
text in what you send" still applies, but it
must not this appendix is mostly quoted verbatim from this source.
As future drafts of the XML namespace proposal are generated, this
appendix will be applied inappropriately. updated. To ensure this appendix reflects the
exact XML is extremely flexible namespace proposal, the notational conventions and BNF
productions in
dealing with issues this appendix match those of the XML specification
[Bray, Paoli, Sperberg-McQueen, 1998].

XML Namespaces are based on the use of qualified names. Names are
permitted to contain a colon, separating the name into two parts,
the namespace name and the local name. The namespace name identifies
a schema's URI. The combination of white space, element ordering, inserting new
elements, etc. This flexibility the universally-managed URI
namespace and the local schema namespace produces names that are
guaranteed universally unique.

XML syntax does not require extension,
especially allow direct use of a URI as a namespace name,
because URIs can contain characters not allowed in XML element
names. Consequently, the area of the meaning of elements.

There namespace name serves as a proxy for a URI.
A special processing instruction described below is no kindness in accepting illegal combinations used to declare
the association of XML
elements. At best it will cause an unwanted result the namespace name with a URI; software that
supports this namespace proposal MUST recognize and at worst it
can cause real damage.

23.3.1 XML Syntax Error Example

The following request body for act on namespace
processing instructions.

A namespace is declared using a PROPFIND method reserved processing instruction.

Goland et al. [Page 82]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

24.4.2 Namespace Declaration PI

[1] NamespacePI ::= '<?xml:namespace' S 'name=' SystemLiteral S
'href=' SystemLiteral S 'as=' NSName S? '?>'
[2] NSName ::= ' Name ' | " Name "

The "name" SystemLiteral is illegal.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href ="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/" as="D"?>
<D:propfind>
<D:allprop/>
<D:propname/>
</D:propfind> a URI which uniquely identifies the
namespace. The definition of "href" SystemLiteral is an optional URI which may be
used to retrieve the propfind element only allows for schema, if one is provided. Some namespaces
need no schemas; this specification does not depend on their
existence, or on the allprop use of any particular machine- or human-
readable syntax in the propname element, not both. Thus schema.

The NSName gives the above is an error and
MUST namespace name which will be responded to with a 400 Bad Request.

Imagine, however, that used as a server wanted link to be "kind" and decided
associate names in an XML document with this schema.

To accomplish this, the production for prolog is replaced as
follows:

24.4.3 Prolog with Namespace Declarations

[3] prolog ::= XMLDecl? S? NamespacePI* Misc* (doctypedecl Misc*)?
[ wfc: Unique Namespace Names ]

24.4.4 Well-Formedness Constraint - Unique Namespace Names

No namespace name may be declared more than once.

24.4.5 Qualified Names

Within the document, some names (constructs corresponding to
pick the allprop element
nonterminal Name) are replaced by qualified names, defined as
follows:

[4] QName ::= (NSPart ':')? LocalPart
[5] NSPart ::= Name [ wfc: Namespace Name Declared ]
[6] LocalPart ::= Name

The NSPart provides the true element namespace name part of the qualified name,
and respond to it. A
client running over a bandwidth limited line who intended to execute
a propname would may be associated with defining schema through the URI in for a big surprise if the server treated
applicable namespace declaration.

The LocalPart provides the
command as an allprop.

23.3.2 Unknown XML Element Example local name part of the qualified name.

24.4.6 Well-Formedness Constraint - Namespace Name Declared

The namespace name, unless it is "xml", must have been declared in a
namespace declaration. The namespace name xml is reserved, and
considered to have been implicitly declared.

Goland et al. [Page 81] 83]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV January 18, March 6, 1998

The previous example was illegal because it contained two elements
that were explicitly banned from appearing together in

24.4.7 Using Qualified Names

To enable the propfind
element. However, XML is an extensible language, so one can imagine
new elements being defined for proper use with propfind. Below of qualified names, it is necessary to
banish colons from all Names which are not qualified; two
productions are replaced as follows:

24.4.8 Element Names

Element types may be given as qualified names. To do this, the
request body
productions for start-, end-, and empty-element tags (STag, ETag,
and EmptyElement) are replaced as follows:

[9] STag ::= '<' QName (S Attribute)* S? '>'
[10] ETag ::= '</' QName S? '>'
[11] EmptyElement ::= '<' QName (S Attribute)* S? '/>'

24.4.9 Scope and Meaning of a PROPFIND and, like Qualified Names

[Note to the previous example, reader: This section does not appear in NOTE-xml-names,
but is necessary to avoid ambiguity for WebDAV XML processors.]

WebDAV compliant XML processors MUST be
rejected with interpret a 400 Bad Request by qualified name as a server that does not understand
URI constructed by appending the expired-props element.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href ="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/" as="D"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.foo.bar/standards/props/" as="E"?>
<D:propfind>
<E:expired-props/>
</D:propfind>

To understand why LocalPart to the schema URI of the
namespace. The scope of a 400 Bad Request namespace in a qualified name is returned let us look at limited
to a single element tag. Every start tag, end tag, or empty XML
element from a namespace MUST include the
request body as namespace name in the server unfamiliar with expired-props sees it.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href ="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/" as="D"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.foo.bar/standards/props/" as="E"?>
<D:propfind>
</D:propfind>

As tag.

Scope Example

<?xml:namespace name="http://www.del.jensen.org/" as="del"?>
<del:glider>
<del:glidername>
Johnny Updraft
</del:glidername>
<del:glideraccidents/>
</del:glider>

In this example, the server does not understand qualified element name "del:glider" is
interpreted as the expired-props element, by URL "http://www.del.jensen.org/glider". Since
the
rules scope of XML, it MUST ignore it. Thus the server sees an a namespace is limited to a single element, each start
tag, end tag, and empty
propfind, which by element tag in the definition example includes the
short name of the propfind element namespace, "del" as part of the qualified name.

Goland et al. [Page 84]

INTERNET-DRAFT WebDAV March 6, 1998

<?xml:namespace name="http://www.del.jensen.org/" as="bar"?>
<bar:glider>
<bar:glidername>
Johnny Updraft
</bar:glidername>
<bar:glideraccidents/>
</bar:glider>

Even though this example is
illegal.

Please note that had syntactically different from the extension been additive it would not
necessarily have resulted in a 400 Bad Request. For
previous example,
imagine it is semantically identical. Each instance of
the following request body namespace name "bar" is replaced with
"http://www.del.jensen.org/" and then appended to the local name for a PROPFIND:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?namespace href ="http://www.iana.org/standards/dav/" as="D"?>
<?namespace href="http://www.foo.bar/standards/props/" as="E"?>
<D:propfind>
<D:propname/>
<E:leave-out>*boss*</E:leave-out>
</D:propfind>
each element tag. The previous resulting tag names in this example contains are
exactly the fictitious element leave-out. Its
purpose same as for the previous example.

<?xml:namespace name="http://www.del.jensen.org/glide" as="foo"?>
<foo:r>
<foo:rname>
Johnny Updraft
</foo:rname>
<foo:raccidents/>
</foo:r>

This example is semantically identical to prevent the return two previous ones.
Each instance of any property whose the namespace name matches "foo" is replaced with
"http://www.del.jensen.org/glide" which is then appended to the submitted pattern. If
local name for each element tag, the previous example were submitted resulting tag names are
identical to a
server unfamiliar with leave-out, the only result would be that those in the
leave-out element would be ignored and a propname would be executed. previous examples.

Goland et al. [Page 82] 85]

----