Deploy a Secure Containerised WebDAV Server with Docker in Minutes

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by vaggeliskls

Deploy a secure, lightweight WebDAV server with Docker in minutes. This containerised solution supports Basic, LDAP, and OAuth authentication, making it ideal for self-hosted file sharing, backups, and enterprise remote access with minimal setup.

Check it out on GitHub: vaggeliskls/webdav-server

What is WebDAV?

WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is an extension of HTTP that lets you manage files on a server upload, download, edit, move, and share as if it were local storage. It’s widely supported across operating systems, backup tools, and mobile apps.

This project provides a modern, containerised WebDAV server that’s:

• Easy to deploy with Docker
• Flexible in authentication
• Ideal for self-hosting and enterprise use

Prerequisites

Before starting, ensure you have:

• Docker version 20.0 or higher
• Basic understanding of containers and WebDAV

Key Features

• Effortless Deployment: Set up a fully operational WebDAV server quickly using Docker.
• Flexible Authentication:
  • Basic Authentication
  • LDAP Authentication
  • OAuth Authentication
• Proxy-Ready: Easily integrate with reverse proxies to add more authentication layers.
• Authentication is Optional: The server runs without authentication by default, allowing flexibility for your setup.

Authentication Setup

You can enable various authentication mechanisms using environment variables in a .env file. Here’s how to configure each one:

Basic Authentication

Authentication is controlled via environment variables in a .env file.

BASIC_AUTH_ENABLED=true
BASIC_AUTH_REALM=WebDAV
BASIC_USERS=alice:alice123 bob:bob123

OAuth Authentication

OAuth authentication (example with Keycloak) configuration:

OAUTH_ENABLED=true
OIDCProviderMetadataURL="http://keycloak/keycloak-auth/realms/master/.well-known/openid-configuration"
OIDCRedirectURI="http://my-domain.local/redirect_uri"
OIDCCryptoPassphrase="randomly_generated_secure_passphrase"
OIDCClientID="webdav-client"
OIDCClientSecret="ABC123def456GHI789jkl0mnopqrs"
OIDCProviderTokenEndpointAuth="client_secret_basic"
OIDCRemoteUserClaim="preferred_username"
OIDCScope="openid email profile"
OIDCXForwardedHeaders="X-Forwarded-Host"

More examples with different identity providers can be found on the mod_auth_openidc GitHub page.

LDAP Authentication

LDAP integration for centralized user management:

LDAP_ENABLED=true
LDAP_URL=ldaps://ldap.example.com
LDAP_ATTRIBUTE=uid
LDAP_BASE_DN=ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
LDAP_BIND_DN=uid=admin,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
LDAP_BIND_PASSWORD=securepassword

WebDAV Methods and Access Control

Control allowed methods with the WEBDAV_OPERATIONS variable.

Usage Example

1) Create a .env

WEBDAV_OPERATIONS="GET OPTIONS PROPFIND"
LDAP_ENABLED=false
OAUTH_ENABLED=false
BASIC_AUTH_ENABLED=false

2) Create a docker-compose.yaml file

services:
  webdav:
    image: ghcr.io/vaggeliskls/webdav-server:latest
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
    volumes:
      - ./webdav-data:/var/lib/dav/data
    env_file:
      - .env

3) Run the server

docker compose up -d

4) Access it Open: http://localhost:8080

This example runs an unauthenticated server. For production, enable HTTPS and authentication.

References

• Docker Apache WebDAV
• What is WebDAV?

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by vaggeliskls