How to use webdav java server library to retrieve / save office documents?

Question

We need to implement client / server to open / edit Office documents from server as confluence does. We have our server side implementations (web services) to download / upload documents. Also we have our authentication services that handle user authentication. We need to implement / configure WebDAV along with these existing services. So:

1. When Office application requests a document from WebDav servlet, webdav connects to our existing service to get the document and would use our existing authentication service to authenticate the user. What code do we need to write to handle this?
2. Save as above to save a document back.

Can anyone please help me on how to get a quick start on this? Any tutorial links?

Thanks & regards, Nadeem Ullah

Answer 1

I recently implemented a prototype using the milton framework to browse the repository and open office documents from our DMS and made good progress. It´s wired up using spring and a filter in our deployment descriptor - so far I´m fairly impressed by milton. It´s easy to use and integrates quite well.

Answer 2

From what I know, Webdav protocol is what you are looking for.

Microsoft Office can open files from a WebDAV server and save them back to the server without the need to download them to local file system. To achieve this the following conditions must be met:

Your WebDAV server must support Class 2. Microsoft Office locks documents when creating and opening files for editing. If Microsoft Office is unable to lock the document it will be opened as read-only.

Your WebDAV server must be configured on the site root in case of MS Office 2007 or earlier. Microsoft Office 2007 and earlier may submit OPTIONS and PROPFIND requests to the site root (http://server/) and requires the server to respond properly. If your WebDAV server is non-root Microsoft Office 2007 and earlier may open documents as read-only. There is no this issue with MS Office 2010 and later versions.

https://www.webdavsystem.com/server/documentation/ms_office_read_only/

Please also look at Apache JackRabit which is a WebDav server. And search WebDav from github for other implementaions.