Webdav, Milton and OBM

http://milton.io

2007: It all started with baby photos...

Yes I could have just used FTP, but that would be too easy!

A Little About Me

Freelance software developer

Commercial vendor for Milton since 2012

Lives in New Zealand

No customers in my own country!

Also have a startup business FuseLMS.com

About Milton

Started in 2007 as small webdav servlet

Now best in the world at what it does only library to support webdav,caldav and carddav

Corporate clients include: Google, HP, Novell

EU firms: Lukkien, 5Point, QualityOnline, Careweb, Idiada, SSP Europe

FOSS projects: ExistDB, BaseX, CouchDB

github.com/miltonio/milton2

About Webdav

Network protocol, like FTP and Samba

But extensible

Its just HTTP, plus a few extras

Supports structured data as well as binary content

Built in with all major Operating Systems

Supported by most major apps, like MS Office, Adobe, etc

Dav Protocols

HTTP 1.1WebDavACLCarddavCaldavQuotaSearchSync

The Awesome-ness of Dav

Scalability! Stateless protocols allow high performance, high availability clusters

Network integration: No hassles with firewalls, its just http

Security: Simple, well understood protocols makes it easy for sys admins to secure

Integration: Just incremental additions to existing web applications, for close integration

Industry support

Broad support from industry working groups, ongoing protocol development

Early leadership from Microsoft

Then Apple led charge with MobileMe and iCloud

Google sees Dav as strategic to making its calendar and contact services ubiquitous

Productivity Models

ModelWhere is my software?Where is my content?Exemplors

1LocalLocalMicrosoft

2RemoteRemoteGoogle, Facebook

3LocalRemoteApple

3bLocalLocal synced to RemoteDropbox

Webdav is useful when local applications need access to remote content

There is a war being waged between local software vendors (Apple,MS) and remote software vendors (Google,Facebook).

Which model is winning?

Webdav for files

Network drives. First use of Webdav

Built into all desktop operating systems: Mac, Windows, Linux

Built into Office (MS+OO) and other productivity apps

Locking, to prevent conflicts

MS Word 2010 even supports co-editing!

But can be slow over WAN's

How to build webdav apps?
Create annotated methods that work with your domain objects

@Root public Repository getRoot() { return findRootRepository(); } @ChildrenOf public List getRootFolders(Repository root) { return root.getFolders(); } @ChildrenOf public List getRootFolders(DirectoryNode root) { return root.getFolders(); } @Get public void getFileContent(FileNode fileNode, OutputStream out){ fileNode.writeContent(out); } @PutChild public FileNode createFile(DirectoryNode dir, String newName, InputStream in) { DataSession.FileNode newFileNode = parent.addFile(newName); newFileNode.setContent(inputStream); return newFileNode; }

How to implement security?

Implement authentication and an access control list:@Authenticate
public Boolean checkPasswordBasic(Profile user, String password) {
return passwordManager.verifyPassword(user, password);
} @Authenticate
public Boolean checkPasswordDigest(Profile user, DigestResponse d) {
return passwordManager.verifyDigest(d, user);
}@AccessControlList
public List getPrivs(target, Profile user) {
if( currentUser == null ) {
return AccessControlledResource.NONE;
} else {
// business rules
}
}

Competitors to webdav for files

Dropbox!! (and other sync apps)

Most users prefer sync'd files to remote access

Webdav-sync protocol exists, but not widely implemented

Ideally support both webdav and sync

Milton has components to support sync

Caldav: Webdav for calendars

Dav is well suited, given the mix of structured data and unstructured content

Probably most widely used Dav protocol

Coming to Windows Phone 8, just announced this week!

So probably available on Window desktop in near future

Very well supported on Mac and iOS devices

How to build Caldav apps?
Start with a webdav app and add calendar capabilities

@ChildrenOf public CalendarsHome getCalendarsHome(Profile user) { return new CalendarsHome(user); // Place holder object } @ChildrenOf @Calendars public List getCalendars(CalendarsHome cals, @Principal Profile profile) { return cals.user.getCalendars(); } @Get @ICalData public void getEventIcal(CalEvent event, Calendar calendar, OutputStream out) { String s = calendarService.getCalendar(event); out.write(s.getBytes(StringUtils.UTF8)); } } @PutChild public CalEvent createEvent(Calendar calendar, final String newName, InputStream in) { CalEvent newEvent = calendarService.createEvent(calendar, newName, in); return newEvent; }

Carddav: for contacts

Milton was deployed to Google Contacts end of 2012

Google has deprecated ActiveSync, forcing iOS users to move to Carddav millions of users!

No built in support for Thunderbird, but SOGO connector is ok

Very well supported on Mac and iOS devices

How to build Carddav apps?
You guessed it easy!

@ChildrenOf
@AddressBooks
public MusicianAddressBook getAddressBook(AddressBooksHome m) {
...}@ContactData
@Get
public byte[] getContactData(MyContact c) {...}

Milton as a Web Framework

Annotations support modelled on Spring MVC

Templating, forms, ajax, data binding and xDav work seamlessly in a single url namespace

Automatically has navigable REST API includes properties!

Eg:

@Post(bindData=true) public Profile saveProfile(Profile profile) { profile.setModifiedDate(new Date()); return profile; }

@Getpublic ModelAndView showUserPag(Profile p) { return new ModelAndView("profile", p, "profPage"); }

What next for Webdav

Expect wider adoption of Oauth2 by client and server vendors

Ubiquitous support for Caldav + Carddav for service vendors and client vendors will be a game changer

Increasing support for webdav sync ? Maybe

What next for Milton?

Ongoing: co-ordination with client-side developers to provide server-side capabilities

Next protocols: webdav-sync + dav search

File sync

Server-to-server sync eg sync OBM calendars with Google calendars

Server application development simple file,calendars and contacts server for small business

What next for OBM and Milton?

An ideal partnership

First calendars...

Then contacts...

Then files ? Hopefully!