Support nextcloud-specific symbolic links

[Rubilmax]

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Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I have a nextcloud server with 2 accounts: account1 and account2.

account1 files structure:

/private
/private/photos
/common

account2 files structure:

/documents

I would like account1 to:

1. be able to create some kind of reference to the folder /private/photos inside /common:

/private
/private/photos
/common
/common/photos -> /private/photos

2. be able to share the folder /common, so that account2 sees the shared folder common inside which they can click on the folder reference photos and be redirected to the folder photos (with proper access control checks)

Describe alternatives you've considered
I didn't find any alternative

Additional context

To start with, maybe we could get rid of access control checks and simply consider that when a folder is shared, the folder references inside it inherit the access controls of the shared link

This has to be nextcloud-native because ideally the behavior is replicated in the app: when acocunt2 uploads a file to common/photos, it gets uploaded to account1//documents/private/photos

Maybe this référence could be directly translated to a symbolic link on the underlying filesystem, when compatible

[solracsf]

Did you try teamfolders (groupfolders) app?

[Rubilmax]

Did you try teamfolders (groupfolders) app?

Can you give me an example setup that solves my issue?

The only thing I see from the documentation of this application is that it allows me to share folders with a group / team of people

But the shared folders seem to only appear in the home of users AND you cannot create a reference to a folder inside another folder

[solracsf]

Teamfolders are folders shared by users inside the same groups, and you can set ACLs on them.

Instead of having "references" or "symlinks", you get real folders owned by nobody but the system.

[Rubilmax]

But that's not solving my need... What I want is having files accessible from 2 paths, not a single system-owned path

This highlights something in my feature request, there are actually 2 sub-requests:

1. Be able to create "references" of folders and files inside Nextcloud, so they can be accessed/navigated through multiple paths
2. Be able to share such "references" or folders containing such "references"

I edited my message to distinguish the 2

[solracsf]

But that's not solving my need...

Well the problem is that this seems very specific to... your needs 😉

But the Feature Request stands, and PRs are always welcome 🤗

[oe8bck]

Well I think, the possibility to have access to ONE folder via TWO different paths is something that has a lot of use cases. I would also like to have something like this.

Best would be if one can also give different permissions from where it is linked.

E.g.:

/department_1/folder_A
/department_2/folder_B

and then links in

/group_1/folder_1 -> /department_1/folder_A with r/w access
/group_1/folder_2 -> /department_2/folder_B with read access
and
/group_2/folder_1 -> /department_1/folder_A with read access
/group_2/folder_2 -> /department_2/folder_B with r/w access

Of course one can do this also with for each user, but I would like to share the link (URL) to /group_1 and /group_2 with the permissions.

KR,
Christof

[alimmroth]

I would also appreciate the possibility to have symbolic links and don't think this is such a niche use case. 👌