Access WebDAV File Manager or ES File Explorer | FileCloud

December 24, 2013

Accessing FileCloud through WebDAV using File Manager (Explorer), ES File Explorer and WebDAV File Manager WebDAV, or Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning is an extension of HTTP (Hypertext Transmission Protocol) that enables users in sharing and editing files stored on remote servers. WebDAV enables users to read and write files, unlike HTTP. Through WebDAV, a […]

Accessing FileCloud through WebDAV using File Manager (Explorer), ES File Explorer and WebDAV File Manager

WebDAV, or Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning is an extension of HTTP (Hypertext Transmission Protocol) that enables users in sharing and editing files stored on remote servers. WebDAV enables users to read and write files, unlike HTTP.

Through WebDAV, a client can mount a remote directory in their own local system. Alternatives to WebDAV include File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).

To use WebDAV, you need a server which supports WebDAV. A popular server like Apache provides WebDAV modules. On the client side, you need a WebDAV client software that connects to your server and lets you mount your share locally on your device.

FileCloud provides WebDAV support. In this post, we will see how this works. First, you need to enable WebDAV support on the server. Login to the Administrator portal and go to Settings and click on the Server tab. Ensure that WebDAV is checked and click Save.

Next, we will try and access it from a client device. In this case, we use a Samsung Galaxy S4 running WebDAV File Manager, a lightweight app which supports WebDAV. The process in other file managers would be mostly similar,

as you need to be concerned only about the configuration on the client side.

On Opening the app, click on the settings button and select ‘Server Add’.Next, provide the settings as shown below. Add the server address as http://<your server IP address>/webdav.

Provide your username and password for authentication. You also need to specify a download path, the location where you data would be saved on the local device.

After adding the configuration details, click on it to connect to the remote server.

After successfully logging in, you can view your files on the server.

Next, we try connection to our client using the File Manager(Explorer). We create a new WebDAV connection as shown below.

We provide the settings as we did with the previous application.

On saving the settings, we are successfully able to connect to our WevDAV server.

The final app that we test it with is the ES File Manager. Under Network, we create a new WebDAV connection as follows.

We then provide the settings as before.

After saving the settings, click on it to connect to the server.

We hope that this post helped you in setting up WebDAV on FileCloud and connecting to it with various apps. You can refer to the documentation for further information.

Do note that all WebDAV clients do not have full support in terms of browsing, downloading, creating, editing and uploading files and directories and the documentation also has a list of compatible clients.

If you still have any issues, feel free to leave a comment below.

By Team FileCloud