Python client library for WebDAV

I have no experience with any of these libraries, but the Python Package Index (“PyPi”) lists quite a few webdav modules.

Apparently you’re looking for a WebDAV client library.

Not sure how the gazillion hits came up, it seems the following 2 looks relevant:

• PyDAV:
  http://users.sfo.com/~jdavis/Software/PyDAV/readme.html#client
• Zope – and look for client.py

I just had a similar need and ended up testing a few Python WebDAV clients for my needs (uploading and downloading files from a WebDAV server). Here’s a summary of my experience:

1) The one that worked for me is python-webdav-lib.

Not much documentation, but a quick look at the code (in particular the example) was enough to figure out how to make it work for me.

2) PyDAV 0.21 (the latest release I found) doesn’t work with Python 2.6 because it uses strings as exceptions. I didn’t try to fix this, expecting further incompatibilities later on.

3) davclient 0.2.0. I looked at it but didn’s explore any further because the documentation didn’t mention the level of API I was looking for (file upload and download).

4) Python_WebDAV_Library-0.3.0. Doesn’t seem to have any upload functionality.

It’s sad that for this question (“What Python webdav library to use?”), which for sure interests more than one person, unrelated answer was accepted (“don’t use Python webdav library”). Well, common problem on Stackexchange.

For people who will be looking for real answers, and given the requirements in the original question (simple API similar to “os” module), I may suggest easywebdav, which has very easy API and even nice and simple implementation, offering upload/download and few file/dir management methods. Due to simple implementation, it so far doesn’t support directory listing, but bug for that was filed, and the author intends to add it.

import easywebdav

webdav = easywebdav.connect(
    host='dav.dumptruck.goldenfrog.com',
    username='_snip_',
    port=443,
    protocol="https",
    password='_snip_')

_file = "test.py"

print webdav.cd("/dav/")
# print webdav._get_url("")
# print webdav.ls()
# print webdav.exists("/dav/test.py")
# print webdav.exists("ECS.zip")
# print webdav.download(_file, "./"+_file)
print webdav.upload("./test.py", "test.py")

Install:

$ sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev libxslt-dev python-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev python-pycurl
$ sudo easy_install webdavclient

Examples:

import webdav.client as wc

options = {
  'webdav_hostname': "https://webdav.server.ru",
  'webdav_login': "login",
  'webdav_password': "password"
}

client = wc.Client(options)

client.check("dir1/file1")
client.info("dir1/file1")

files = client.list()
free_size = client.free()

client.mkdir("dir1/dir2")
client.clean("dir1/dir2")

client.copy(remote_path_from="dir1/file1", remote_path_to="dir2/file1")
client.move(remote_path_from="dir1/file1", remote_path_to="dir2/file1")

client.download_sync(remote_path="dir1/file1", local_path="~/Downloads/file1")
client.upload_sync(remote_path="dir1/file1", local_path="~/Documents/file1")
client.download_async(remote_path="dir1/file1", local_path="~/Downloads/file1", callback=callback)
client.upload_async(remote_path="dir1/file1", local_path="~/Documents/file1", callback=callback)

link = client.publish("dir1/file1")
client.unpublish("dir1/file1")

Links:

• Source code here
• Packet here