Akshay's Blog

WebDAV server to synchronize files

 520  3 mins

I have been using Orgzly for managing tasks and taking notes on my mobile device. Sometimes, I need notes taken in Orgzly app on my laptop. Hence I was looking for different methods to synchronize org files from Orgzly to my laptop. Orgzly has provided an option to create repository to sync files to it. Currently app has support for local storage and WebDAV repositories.

WebDAV is an extension of HTTP protocol to manage files on the server. It provides methods like COPY, MOVE, PROPFIND, LOCK, UNLOCK etc. to work on files.

To synchronize files to my laptop, I need to start a WebDAV server on my laptop. Different web servers like Nginx, Apache HTTP server, Caddy has support to start a WebDAV server. I choose Caddy to create WebDAV server because it is easy and I have used Caddy before.

Start WebDAV server using Caddy

Caddy application can extend using other Caddy modules. Caddy webDAV module is required to implement simple webDAV. You can use following Dockerfile to build an caddy-webdav image using xcaddy.

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FROM caddy:2.5.0-builder AS builder

RUN xcaddy build \
    --with github.com/mholt/caddy-webdav@f7b67f8ca1e655103bbe7a96577c88fe96f1dfb2

FROM caddy:2.5.0

COPY --from=builder /usr/bin/caddy /usr/bin/caddy

Run command to build a Docker image:

docker build -t caddy-webdav:latest .

Note: I have already built and pushed a akshayg96/webdav-caddy image to use.

Now you need an Caddyfile for your webDAV configuration.

:8080

route {
	basicauth {
		<user> <hashed-password>
	}
	rewrite /orgzly /orgzly/
	webdav /orgzly/* {
		root orgzly
		prefix /orgzly
	}
	file_server
}

This will serve files under <basepath-of-caddyfile>/orgzly/ directory. One can generate hashed password using caddy hash-password command.

Alternatively one can serve all folders and files instead of just orgzly using below Caddyfile:

:8080

@get method GET

route {
	basicauth {
		<user> <hashed-password>
	}
	file_server @get browse
	webdav
}

Now run following command to start webdav-caddy server in the container:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 \
    --name caddy-webdav \
    --restart always \
    -v $PWD/Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile \
    -v caddy_data:/data \
    -v $PWD:/srv \
    caddy-webdav:latest

Test server using WebDAV client

GNOME Files does support for access webDAV files. For that, open Files and go to Other Locations and add following address to connect to webDAV.

dav://localhost:8080/orgzly

It will ask for username and password. Provided one that you used in your Caddyfile. After successful authentication, you will be able to get, read and write files under orgzly directory.

Synchronize org files from Orgzly app

When your mobile phone and laptop are connected to a same network (or if can access laptop from mobile) then, you’ll be able to sync org file from Orgzly to laptop.

Add repository in Orgzly with below URL:

webdav://<laptop-ip>:8080/orgzly/

Provide correct username and password and connect.

Now you can sync Orgzly Notebooks to your laptop as per the sync policy you have set.

Note: If you have multiple repositories, you can set link for notebooks.

Bonus: Access webDAV files using mobile file manager

I use Xplore as a file manager on mobile. Xplore has option to add webDAV web storage. Once you add webDAV storage in Xplore same way how we added repository in Orgzly, you will be able to access files from laptop.

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