How to edit word documents from webdav?

Question

I would like to implement a functionality in an MVC3 web application which would allow users to edit Microsoft Office documents directly with WebDAV but unfortunately I have no clue where to start. I have to make links for the documents which, once clicked, would open the documents and after the user saved a document, it should be uploaded back to the server. Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You would need probably some web browser plugin (ActiveX or Netscape API), which would handle this for you. You can pass the url of the document (with some authentication cookie) to that plugin on clicking of the link. The plugin than can download the file, open it using ShellExecute or similar (e.g.Launch services on mac) and on close of the file you can upload the file.

This is of course very basic usage and does not employ the strength of webDAV protocol. You should handle webdav locks for example or detect etags of the file before upload etc. to prevent some data loss. You would have to read more about webdav: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3744.txt.