simple-dav-client

A minimal, robust command-line client for interacting with a WebDAV server over plain HTTP with no authentication.

Features

• List (ls): List remote files or directories.
• Upload (put): Upload local files or directories (recursively) to a remote directory.
• Download (get): Download remote files or directories (recursively) to a local directory.
• Create (mkdir): Create directories on the remote server (optionally recursively).
• Remove (rm): Delete remote files or directories (recursively).

Design

This tool is designed for maximum clarity and correctness:

• ✅ No Authentication / No HTTPS: This client uses only HTTP (not HTTPS), and does not support authentication, cookies, or custom headers. Simplicity was prioritized for trusted, local/test servers.
• ✅ Fail Fast & Loudly: If any network, connection, or server error occurs, the tool will abort and display an error message. No retry, fallback, or silent handling is implemented by design.
• ✅ Path Tokenization: All local and remote paths are tokenized using the fspathverbs library, and all internal APIs use tokenized paths. This ensures reliable, traversal-safe handling and robust operation across platforms and server configurations.
• ✅ Recursive Operations: Both uploads and downloads automatically recurse into directories, preserving directory hierarchies for both local-to-remote and remote-to-local transmissions.
  • This client uses the classic Command Pattern.
    • All uploads (put) and downloads (get) are performed by first compiling a list of PutAction and GetAction operation objects that describe exactly what needs to be done, then executing in strict order.
    • This allows for clean error reporting, separation of planning and execution, and makes future extensions ( logging, dry runs, previews, etc.) straightforward.
• ✅ Strong Code Separation: Command-line parsing/dispatch is cleanly separated from the core logic for clarity and maintainability.

Installation

pip install simple-dav-client

After installation, run it as simple_dav_client.

Usage

List a remote file or directory:

simple_dav_client --host localhost --port 8080 ls /remote/file-or-directory

Download a remote file or directory to ./local:

simple_dav_client --host localhost --port 8080 get -O ./local /remote/file-or-directory

Upload a local file or directory to /remote:

simple_dav_client --host localhost --port 8080 put -O /remote ./local/file-or-directory

Create a remote directory (including parent directories):

simple_dav_client --host localhost --port 8080 mkdir -p /remote/child-directory

Remove a remote file or directory:

simple_dav_client --host localhost --port 8080 rm /remote/file-or-directory

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please submit pull requests or open issues on the GitHub repository.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.