Hey all,
We would like to use ownCloud as more of a document publishing repository. I have no problem with using WebDAV (though I am used to a web service API in tools such as DocuWare), except I cannot figure out if ownCloud can do what we need to do.
We would like to have folders set up for out sales people, one per person. Access rights would be determined by various hierarchical rules, like having a sales manager be able to see all the folders of the salespeople under her. A salesperson without any direct reports would only be able to see his own folder, etc. I think ownCloud can set up permissions in this way, but am not sure, so that is the first question:
1. Can ownCloud support complex, multi-level permissions to control file visibility within each user’s root folder?
If so, that is only part of what we need. We would also want to have an uber-user set up so that documents could be placed anywhere in the various user folders without having to use those user’s password credentials (I don’t want to reinvent login credential storage for obvious reasons). In summary, we need to be able to add files to any folder from an over-arching user account, bringing me to question two:
2. Can we set up a user that can see everyone’s files and perform uploads and downloads via WebDAV (or some other means)?
We’d also like all of this to work via HTTPS, utilizing something like the Windows MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP COM object, as that is how we access many other web services from Visual Foxpro to do tasks such as shipment tracking, Google Geocoding, and consuming DocuWare web services. I have already figured out how to do file uploads and downloads via entry point:
https://{server}/owncloud/remote.php/webdav/
and the remote file structure is then based on whomever I log in as. But, as question 2 indicates, what if I want to log in as the uber-user and be able to upload and download files from any user’s area? I can use the alternate entry point:
https://{server}/owncloud/remote.php/dav/files/{username}/
as listed in the documentation, but when I try to access files from that entry point via straight HTTP requests I run into:
This is the WebDAV interface. It can only be accessed by WebDAV clients such as the ownCloud desktop sync client.
I have read a couple threads on that response, and it would seem one cannot us the user-specific entry point via straight HTTP requests. That brings me to a final question:
3. If there is a way to assign hierarchical permissions and also a way to create an uber-account with access to everyone’s file areas, what can I use from there to create folder structures and upload/download files across all user account?
I see a lot of talk about curl, but don’t really know how I would use that from Visual Foxpro (which is still our primary development tool). That’s why I’d like to use standard HTTP requests where possible, because I know I can get that to work.
Can anyone answer these three questions, even if the answer is simply, “Can’t get there from here.”? I appreciate any and all insight anyone can offer!
Thanks,
Joe Kaufman