18.2 Setting Up Oracle Portal for WebDAV

WebDAV is configured on both the server side (in Oracle Portal) and the client side (your personal computer). This section provides information on setting up a WebDAV client on the client side as well as specifying some WebDAV defaults within Oracle Portal.

Oracle Portal has a configuration file (oradav.conf) that contains OraDAV parameters. When Oracle Fusion Middleware is installed, all required OraDAV parameters are set with values that enable access to Oracle database content through a Web browser or a WebDAV client. If necessary, the portal administrator can modify parameter values if the default values do not meet your portal's needs.

If you are a portal administrator and would like detailed information about the oradav.conf file and how to modify OraDAV parameters, refer to the Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Portal.

Additionally, there are options within the Oracle Portal user interface that you can set in advance to prepare the way for uploading content through a WebDAV client. This section provides information on these options. It includes the following subsections:

18.2.1 Specifying Default Item Types for Zip and WebDAV Uploads

When users add files to a portal page using an unzip operation or a WebDAV client (for example, Web Folders, Cadaver, or Dreamweaver), the process provides no intrinsic way of notifying the portal of the uploaded files' types. To address this, Oracle Portal provides a simple way of predetermining the item types of files that are uploaded through an unzip operation or through WebDAV clients. It provides a page property called Default WebDAV Item Types, located on the Items tab of page properties.

Some of the useful applications of this feature include:

  • If the other items in your page use specific custom item types, you might want to make sure that items added with WebDAV clients also use those custom item types.

  • You may want to choose Zip File as the default WebDAV item type for Zip files that are added with a WebDAV client. Doing so will enable users to extract Zip files within the portal.

  • If you want users to be able to download Zip files from a portal, but not to extract them into the portal, you might choose File as the default WebDAV item type for Zip files.

Default WebDAV Types can be specified on a page-by-page basis in your portal, although the default for portal sub-pages is to inherit these settings from the parent page. On a page group's root page (which has no parent page), the default value is File for regular files, Zip File for Zip files, and File for image files.

To specify default WebDAV item types:

  1. Log in to Oracle Portal.

  2. Click the Build tab to bring it forward.

  3. From the Page Groups portlet Work In drop-down list, select the page group that owns the page on which to set default WebDAV file types.

    In default installations, the Page Groups portlet is located on the Build tab of the Portal Builder page.

  4. Under Layout & Appearance, go to the Pages section, and click the name of the page on which to set default WebDAV file types.

    This opens the page in Edit mode.

  5. In the page toolbar, click the Page: Properties link.

  6. Click the Items tab to bring it forward, and go to the Default WebDAV Types section (Figure 18-2):

    Figure 18-2 Default WebDAV Types Section with Specific Selections

    Default WebDAV Types section with specific type selections
    • From the Default Regular Files list, choose the item type to assign to regular files (for example, documents) that are uploaded to a portal page through a WebDAV client.

    • From the Default Zip Files list, choose the item type to assign to Zip files that are uploaded to a portal page through a WebDAV client.

    • From the Default Image Files list, choose the item type to assign to image files that are uploaded to a portal page through a WebDAV client.

    The item types that display on the default WebDAV item types lists include only those file-based item types that are available in the page group. The page group administrator determines which item types are available in a page group. Of the available item types, only file-based item types (that is, standard and custom variations of File, Image, Image Map, and Zip File) display on these lists.

    If the page group does not contain any file-based item types, all WebDAV uploads to the page group fail with a 403 Forbidden error. A check of the MY_ERROR_LOG.TXT log file will indicate the cause.

    For sub-pages, choose Inherit from Parent Page when you want to use the same default WebDAV item types as the page's parent page (Figure 18-3).

    Figure 18-3 Default WebDAV Types Section Set to Inherit From Parent Page

    Default WebDAV Type section set to inherit from parent page
  7. Click OK to save your changes and return to the page.

Note:

If you delete an item type from your portal, and that type was one of the Default WebDAV Types selected on the Items tab of page properties, the option that used that type (either Default Regular Files, Default Zip Files, or Default Image Files) is reset to Inherit from Parent Page - [File/Zip File/Image].

If all item types are deleted, users get an error when uploading files. The MY_ERROR_LOG.TXT file provides information stating the cause.

When a new page is created, the settings for the property Default WebDAV Types is always reset to Inherit from Parent Page. With this option selected, changes to the Default WebDAV Types setting on the parent page automatically cascade down to child pages.

This means that even though the parent page has the setting Default Regular Files set to File, the new page's Default Regular Files will be set to Inherit from Parent Page. The result is the same, that is, the new page picks up the value of File from the parent page.

Users are free to change the Default WebDAV Types settings on the new child page to, for example, Image; though leaving the setting at Inherit ensures that any future changes made to the parent's WebDAV defaults are cascaded automatically to the child page.

18.2.2 Selecting a Target Region for Content Added Through WebDAV

Oracle Portal provides the option to identify in advance the item region that should receive any content you upload, move, or copy into your portal through a WebDAV client. The procedure for identifying default regions is explained in Section 7.8, "Selecting Default Regions for Content Uploads". This section provides additional information about region selection that is particularly relevant to WebDAV.

  • The target page must contain at least one item region or one undefined region. If a page has more than one item region, the page designer can specify one of those regions as the default item region through the procedure described in Section 7.8, "Selecting Default Regions for Content Uploads".

  • When you add an item to the page using WebDAV, the item is placed in the page's default item region. If the target page is based on a Portal Template, the default item region is determined by the template's default item region.

    If the default item region in a template is set not to allow users to add content, this setting is ignored by WebDAV when adding content to pages that are based on the template.

  • If a default item region has not been specified, the item is placed in the second item region on the page (or the first if there is only one item region). The second item region is used to avoid placing items in a region intended for navigation elements.

  • If there are no item regions on the page, the item is placed in the first undefined region on the page (and that undefined region then becomes an item region). If the page is based on a template that contains no item regions, users cannot add content to the page, even if the page contains undefined regions.

  • All pages, including those with no item regions, are visible on the WebDAV side. Moving or copying an item into a page with no item or no undefined regions produces an error.

  • The default item region applies to new items only. For example, if the default item region for a page changes, and an item on that page is subsequently edited, the item will remain in its current region; it will not be moved to the new default item region.

  • Pages created from a WebDAV client automatically include an item region.

  • You cannot add items to tabs in pages. If a page consists entirely of tabs, you cannot add items to the page even though it is listed in the WebDAV client.

  • You can move and copy items across page groups. Copying pages across page groups is not supported in Oracle Portal. To perform this action using WebDAV, copy the pages to your local file system (where they display as folders), then copy them from the file system to the target page group. Note, however, that when you move or copy a page in this way, you lose all the associated page and content metadata. This includes such things as custom item attributes, author, dates, version, and the like. Just the file names and item content is preserved.

  • In Web Folders, depending on your operating system, you cannot copy an item into the same folder. For example, in Windows 2000, dragging an item from the right pane into the same folder in the left pane will raise an error.