tgstoecker / Webdav-uploader

Python3 WebDAV uploader

Base version copied from here: https://git.fh-aachen.de/embeddedutils/webdav_uploader/-/tree/main/

Added minor modifications of my own.

Requirements should be installed with:
mamba install -c conda-forge webdavclient3

Important: Currently deletes everything in target directory before uploading...

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Simple uploader (blocking mode) for WebDAV. used to upload files to any WebDAV server (e.g. sciebo) based on the python package webdavclient3.

How to use

Example uploading a file

• Server: https://fh-aachen.sciebo.de/remote.php/webdav
• username: jh874ke
• password: my_password
• remote_path: upload/path/sciebo
• local_path: my_local_file.txt

python3 webdav_uploader.py -s https://fh-aachen.sciebo.de/remote.php/webdav -u jh874ke -p my_password -r upload/path/sciebo -l my_local_file.txt

Arent there already other WebDAV tools?

As far as i know there are two tools to use WebDAV in linux: cadaver which is a command-line interface (cli) and davf2s which allow to mount WebDAV servers as a directory. The difference from these two tools is that this script allows to upload files to a WebDAV server in blocking mode and does not require user interaction as the credentials and folder/files that want to be uploaded are passed as arguments once.

What does this mean? It means that the script will upload the desired directory/file to a WebDAV server without any further user interaction and wait until the upload is finished. As far as I have tried with cadaver,I havent figured how to pass interactive arguments through terminal. I have tried for example:

echo -e "username\npass\nCommand1\nCommand2\netc"| cadaver https://theserver.com 

but after executing it just logins and closes the session without accepting the rest of the interactive commands "\nCommand1\nCommand2\netc". The other option is davfs2 but it works asynchronously, so when the remote server is mounted, a change or upload in file will not wait until completion.

Why is it important to upload files in blocking mode? For my objective, I want to upload release files in a Gitlab CI and make sure the job wait until the upload is finished correctly. As mentioned davfs2 does not work in blocking mode and I havent been able to use cadaver in non-interactive mode.

How to integrate with Gitlab CI?

If you want to integrate this script to your Gitlab CI jobs you require a docker container with:

• git
• python3
• python module webdavclient3

Alternatively you can use my docker container which already has the necessary requirements.

Example of how to use the python script in a GitlabCI job

Create release:
    image: registry.git.fh-aachen.de/embeddedtools/davfs2
    tags: 
    - shared
    stage: release
    script:
    - zip -r my_release.zip /the_release_files -x #Compress release files in a zip
    - git clone https://git.fh-aachen.de/iaam_utils/webdav_uploader #Get the webdav uploader script
    #Make the job upload the zip file and wait until completion
    - python3 webdav_uploader/webdav_uploader.py -s https://fh-aachen.sciebo.de/remote.php/webdav -u $WEBDAV_USER -p $WEBDAV_PASS -r $UPLOAD_PATH -l my_release.zip
    #Note: For security reasones the variables WEBDAV_USER,WEBDAV_PASS and UPLOAD_PATH 
    #      should be retrieved by a Secret manager or at least with masked gitlab variables https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/variables/#masked-variable-requirements
    only:
        refs:
        - master #Only upload job if its the master branch
    when: manual #Release is a manual job,otherwise would uplaod each new commit