Implementing a WebDAV filesystem with PHP and SabreDAV

Plug-Ins

In between creating this object and handling the request, you can add any number of plug-ins to the server. The plug-ins perform a variety of functions, such as handling file-locking or doing some other intermediary operations on files.

SabreDAV comes with a number of plug-ins, including:

• A driver that lets you browse the WebDAV file server through your web browser
• A driver for file locking (we'll look at this in the next section)
• A driver to ignore resource fork files (such as the Thumbs.db file in Windows or the .DS_Store and "dot underscore" files in Mac OS X.

All plug-ins extend from the Sabre_DAV_ServerPlugin class. Once instantiated, you add them to the server using the addPlugin() method.

Adding a Web Browser Plug-In

To demonstrate this, let's add the web browser plug-in so we can look at the files on the server through our web browser. The that adds this functionality is Sabre_DAV_Browser_Plugin.

The following listing shows the code for the WebDAV server, now with the web browser plug-in.

<?php
    require_once('Sabre.autoload.php');
 
    $path = '/var/www/dav/files';
 
    $tree = new Sabre_DAV_ObjectTree(
        new Sabre_DAV_FS_Directory($path)
    );
 
    $server = new Sabre_DAV_Server($tree);
 
    $server->addPlugin(
        new Sabre_DAV_Browser_Plugin()
    );
 
    $server->exec();
?>

Now you can try visiting the WebDAV server in your browser. This plug-in lists all files, as well as giving you options for creating folders and uploading files.

Figure 2 Viewing the WebDAV server in a web browser

If you would like to apply your own styling to this web-based interface, you can copy the Sabre_DAV_Browser_Plugin to your own plug-in and make any changes to the display as required.

• Next: Ignoring Temporary Files