| INTERNET-DRAFT draft-ietf-webdav-acl-11       Expires March 10, 2004 | Geoffrey Clemm, IBM Anne Hopkins, Microsoft Corporation Eric Sedlar, Oracle Corporation Jim Whitehead, U.C. Santa Cruz 
 | 
WebDAV Access Control Protocol
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
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Abstract
This document specifies a set of methods, headers, message bodies, properties, and reports that define Access Control extensions to the WebDAV Distributed Authoring Protocol. This protocol permits a client to read and modify access control lists that instruct a server whether to allow or deny operations upon a resource (such as HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) method invocations) by a given principal. A lightweight representation of principals as Web resources supports integration of a wide range of user management repositories. Search operations allow discovery and manipulation of principals using human names.
This document is a product of the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force. Comments on this draft are welcomed, and should be addressed to the acl@webdav.org mailing list. Other related documents can be found at http://greenbytes.de/tech/, and http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/webdav/.
Table of Contents
3.7          
DAV:read-current-user-privilege-set Privilege  8
3.8          
DAV:write-acl Privilege. 8
3.12          
Aggregation of Predefined Privileges  9
5     Access Control 
Properties. 10
5.1.1    Example: Retrieving 
DAV:owner 11
5.1.2    Example: An Attempt to Set 
DAV:owner 11
5.2          
DAV:supported-privilege-set 12
5.2.1    Example: Retrieving a List of 
Privileges Supported on a Resource  13
5.3          
DAV:current-user-privilege-set 15
5.3.1    Example: Retrieving the User's 
Current Set of Assigned Privileges  15
5.4.5    Example: Retrieving a 
Resource's Access Control List 18
5.5.2    DAV:no-invert ACE 
Constraint 19
5.5.3          
DAV:deny-before-grant 19
Example: Retrieving 
DAV:acl-restrictions  20
5.7          
DAV:principal-collection-set 21
5.7.1    Example: Retrieving 
DAV:principal-collection-set 21
5.8      Example: 
PROPFIND to retrieve access control properties  22
7     Access Control 
and Existing Methods. 26
8.1.2    Example: the ACL method. 29
8.1.3    Example: ACL method failure due to 
protected ACE conflict 29
8.1.4    Example: ACL method 
failure due to an inherited ACE conflict 30
8.1.5    Example: ACL method 
failure due to an attempt to set grant and deny in a single ACE. 31
9.2      
DAV:acl-principal-prop-set Report 32
9.2.1    Example: DAV:acl-principal-prop-set 
Report 33
9.3          
DAV:principal-match REPORT  34
9.3.1    Example: 
DAV:principal-match REPORT  34
9.4          
DAV:principal-property-search REPORT. 35
9.4.2    Example: successful 
DAV:principal-property-search REPORT  37
9.5          
DAV:principal-search-property-set REPORT  39
9.5.1    Example: 
DAV:principal-search-property-set REPORT  39
11          
Internationalization Considerations  40
12.1    Increased Risk of Compromised Users  41
12.2    Risks of the 
DAV:read-acl and DAV:current-user-privilege-set Privileges. 41
12.3    No Foreknowledge of 
Initial ACL. 42
17.2          
Informational References. 43
19.1    WebDAV XML Document 
Type Definition Addendum   45
19.2    WebDAV Method 
Privilege Table (Normative) 47
 
The goal 
of the WebDAV access control extensions is to provide an interoperable mechanism 
for handling discretionary access control for content and metadata managed by 
WebDAV servers.  WebDAV access 
control can be implemented on content repositories with security as simple as 
that of a UNIX file system, as well as more sophisticated models.  The underlying principle of access 
control is that who you are determines what operations you can perform on a 
resource. The "who you are" is defined by a "principal" identifier; users, 
client software, servers, and groups of the previous have principal identifiers. 
The "operations you can perform" are determined by a single "access control 
list" (ACL) associated with a resource.  
An ACL contains a set of "access control entries" (ACEs), where each ACE 
specifies a principal and a set of privileges that are either granted or denied 
to that principal. When a principal submits an operation (such as an HTTP or 
WebDAV method) to a resource for execution, the server evaluates the ACEs in the 
ACL to determine if the principal has permission for that 
operation.
Since 
every ACE contains the identifier of a principal, client software operated by a 
human must provide a mechanism for selecting this principal. This specification 
uses http(s) scheme URLs to identify principals, which are represented as 
WebDAV-capable resources. There is no guarantee that the URLs identifying 
principals will be meaningful to a human. For example, 
http://www.example.com/u/256432 and http://www.example.com/people/Greg.Stein are 
both valid URLs that could be used to identify the same principal. To remedy 
this, every principal resource has the DAV:displayname property containing a 
human-readable name for the principal.
Since a 
principal can be identified by multiple URLs, it raises the problem of 
determining exactly which principal is being referenced in a given ACE. It is 
impossible for a client to determine that an ACE granting the read privilege to 
http://www.example.com/people/Greg.Stein also affects the principal at 
http://www.example.com/u/256432. That is, a client has no mechanism for 
determining that two URLs identify the same principal resource.  As a result, this specification requires 
clients to use just one of the many possible URLs for a principal when creating 
ACEs. A client can discover which URL to use by retrieving the DAV:principal-URL 
property (Section 4.2) from a principal resource. No matter which of the 
principal's URLs is used with PROPFIND, the property always returns the same 
URL.
With a 
system having hundreds to thousands of principals, the problem arises of how to 
allow a human operator of client software to select just one of these 
principals. One approach is to use broad collection hierarchies to spread the 
principals over a large number of collections, yielding few principals per 
collection. An example of this is a two level hierarchy with the first level 
containing 36 collections (a-z, 0-9), and the second level being another 36, 
creating collections /a/a/, /a/b/, ..., /a/z/, such that a principal with last 
name "Stein" would appear at /s/t/Stein. In effect, this pre-computes a common 
query, search on last name, and encodes it into a hierarchy. The drawback with 
this scheme is that it handles only a small set of predefined queries, and 
drilling down through the collection hierarchy adds unnecessary steps (navigate 
down/up) when the user already knows the principal's name. While organizing 
principal URLs into a hierarchy is a valid namespace organization, users should 
not be forced to navigate this hierarchy to select a 
principal.
This 
specification provides the capability to perform substring searches over a small 
set of properties on the resources representing principals. This permits 
searches based on last name, first name, user name, job title, etc. Two separate 
searches are supported, both via the REPORT method, one to search principal 
resources (DAV:principal-property-search, Section 9.4), the other to determine which properties may be 
searched at all (DAV:principal-search-property-set, Section 9.5). 
Once a 
principal has been identified in an ACE, a server evaluating that ACE must know 
the identity of the principal making a protocol request, and must validate that 
that principal is who they claim to be, a process known as authentication. This 
specification intentionally omits discussion of authentication, as the HTTP 
protocol already has a number of authentication mechanisms [RFC2617].  Some authentication mechanism (such as 
HTTP Digest Authentication, which all WebDAV compliant implementations are 
required to support) must be available to validate the identity of a principal. 
The 
following issues are out of scope for this document:
·         
Access control that applies only to 
a particular property on a resource (excepting the access control properties 
DAV:acl and DAV:current-user-privilege-set), rather than the entire 
resource,
·         
Role-based security (where a role 
can be seen as a dynamically defined group of principals),
·         
Specification of the ways an ACL on 
a resource is initialized,
·         
Specification of an ACL that 
applies globally to all resources, rather than to a particular 
resource.
·         
Creation and maintenance of 
resources representing people or computational agents (principals), and groups 
of these.
This 
specification is organized as follows. Section 1.1 defines key concepts used throughout the 
specification, and is followed by a more in-depth discussion of principals 
(Section 2), and privileges (Section 3). Properties defined on principals are specified in 
Section 4, and access control properties for content resources 
are specified in Section 5. The ways ACLs are to be evaluated is described in 
section 6. Client discovery of access control capability using OPTIONS is 
described in Section 7.1. Interactions between access control functionality 
and existing HTTP and WebDAV methods are described in the remainder of Section 
7. The access control setting method, ACL, is specified 
in Section 8. Four reports that provide limited server-side 
searching capabilities are described in Section 9. Sections on XML processing (Section 10), Internationalization considerations (Section 11), security considerations (Section 12), and authentication (Section 13) round out the specification. An appendix (Section 
19.1) provides an XML Document Type Definition (DTD) for 
the XML elements defined in the specification.
This draft uses the terms defined in HTTP [RFC2616] and WebDAV [RFC2518]. In addition, the following terms are defined:
principal
A "principal" is a distinct human or 
computational actor that initiates access to network resources.  In this protocol, a principal is an HTTP 
resource that represents such an actor.
group
A "group" is a principal that represents a 
set of other principals.
privilege
A "privilege" controls 
access to a particular set of HTTP operations on a 
resource.
aggregate privilege
An "aggregate privilege" is a privilege that contains a set of other privileges.
abstract privilege
The modifier "abstract", when applied to a privilege on a resource, means the privilege cannot be set in an access control element (ACE) on that resource .
access control list (ACL)
An "ACL" is a list of access control elements that define access control to a particular resource.
access control element (ACE)
An "ACE" either grants or denies a particular set of (non-abstract) privileges for a particular principal.
inherited ACE
An "inherited ACE" is an ACE that is dynamically shared from the ACL of another resource. When a shared ACE changes on the primary resource, it is also changed on inheriting resources.
protected property
A "protected property" is one whose value cannot be updated except by a method explicitly defined as updating that specific property. In particular, a protected property cannot be updated with a PROPPATCH request.
The augmented BNF used by this document to describe protocol elements is described in Section 2.1 of [RFC2616]. Because this augmented BNF uses the basic production rules provided in Section 2.2 of [RFC2616], those rules apply to this document as well.
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
Definitions of XML elements in this document use XML element type declarations (as found in XML Document Type Declarations), described in Section 3.2 of [REC-XML]. When an XML element type in the "DAV:" namespace is referenced in this document outside of the context of an XML fragment, the string "DAV:" will be prefixed to the element name.
A principal is a network resource 
that represents a distinct human or computational actor that initiates access to 
network resources. Users and groups are represented as principals in many 
implementations; other types of principals are also possible. A URI of any 
scheme MAY be used to identify a principal resource. However, servers 
implementing this specification MUST expose principal resources at an http(s) 
URL, which is a privileged scheme that points to resources that have additional 
properties, as described in Section 4. So, a principal resource can have multiple URIs, one 
of which has to be an http(s) scheme URL. Although an implementation SHOULD 
support PROPFIND and MAY support PROPPATCH to access and modify information 
about a principal, it is not required to do so.  
A principal resource may be a 
group, where a group is a principal that represents a set of other principals, 
called the members of the group.  If 
a person or computational agent matches a principal resource that is a member of 
a group, they also match the group. Membership in a group is recursive, so if a 
principal is a member of group GRPA, and GRPA is a member of group GRPB, then 
the principal is also a member of GRPB.
Ability to perform a given method 
on a resource MUST be controlled by one or more privileges.  Authors of protocol extensions that 
define new HTTP methods SHOULD specify which privileges (by defining new 
privileges, or mapping to ones below) are required to perform the method.  A principal with no privileges to a 
resource MUST be denied any HTTP access to that resource, unless the principal 
matches an ACE constructed using the DAV:all, DAV:authenticated, or 
DAV:unauthenticated pseudo-principals (see Section 5.4.1).  
Servers MUST report a 403 "Forbidden" error if access is denied, except 
in the case where the privilege restricts the ability to know the resource 
exists, in which case 404 "Not Found" may be 
returned.
Privileges may be containers of 
other privileges, in which case they are termed "aggregate 
privileges".  If a principal is 
granted or denied an aggregate privilege, it is semantically equivalent to 
granting or denying each of the aggregated privileges individually.  For example, an implementation may 
define add-member and remove-member privileges that control the ability to add 
and remove a member of a group.  
Since these privileges control the ability to update the state of a 
group, these privileges would be aggregated by the DAV:write privilege on a 
group, and granting the DAV:write privilege on a group would also grant the 
add-member and remove-member privileges.
Privileges may be declared to be 
"abstract" for a given resource, in which case they cannot be set in an 
ACE on that resource. Aggregate and non-aggregate privileges are both capable of 
being abstract. Abstract privileges are useful for modeling privileges that 
otherwise would not be exposed via the protocol. Abstract privileges also 
provide server implementations with flexibility in implementing the privileges 
defined in this specification.  For 
example, if a server is incapable of separating the read resource capability 
from the read ACL capability, it can still model the DAV:read and DAV:read-acl 
privileges defined in this specification by declaring them abstract, and 
containing them within a non-abstract aggregate privilege (say, read-all) that 
holds DAV:read, and DAV:read-acl. In this way, it is possible to set the 
aggregate privilege, read-all, thus coupling the setting of DAV:read and 
DAV:read-acl, but it is not possible to set DAV:read, or DAV:read-acl 
individually. Since aggregate privileges can be abstract, it is also possible to 
use abstract privileges to group or organize 
non-abstract privileges. Privilege containment loops are not allowed; therefore, 
a privilege MUST NOT contain itself. For example, DAV:read cannot contain 
DAV:read.
The set of privileges that apply to 
a particular resource may vary with the DAV:resourcetype of the resource, as 
well as between different server implementations.  To promote interoperability, however, 
this specification defines a set of well-known privileges (e.g. DAV:read, 
DAV:write, DAV:read-acl, DAV:write-acl, DAV:read-current-user-privilege-set, and 
DAV:all), which can at least be used to classify the other privileges defined on 
a particular resource. The access permissions on null resources (defined in 
[RFC2518], Section 3) are solely those they inherit (if any), and they are not 
discoverable (i.e., the access control properties specified in Section 5 are not defined on null resources). On the transition 
from null to stateful resource, the initial access control list is set by the 
server's default ACL value policy (if any).
Server implementations MAY define 
new privileges beyond those defined in this specification. Privileges defined by 
individual implementations MUST NOT use the DAV: namespace, and instead should 
use a namespace that they control, such as an http scheme 
URL.
The read privilege controls methods 
that return information about the state of the resource, including the 
resource's properties. Affected methods include GET and PROPFIND.  Any implementation-defined privilege 
that also controls access to GET and PROPFIND must be aggregated under 
DAV:read—if an ACL grants access to DAV:read, the client may expect that no 
other privilege needs to be granted to have access to GET and PROPFIND.  Additionally, the read privilege MUST 
control the OPTIONS method.
<!ELEMENT read EMPTY>
The write privilege controls 
methods that lock a resource or modify the content, dead properties, or (in the 
case of a collection) membership of the resource, such as PUT and 
PROPPATCH.  Note that state 
modification is also controlled via locking (see section 5.3 of [WEBDAV]), so 
effective write access requires that both write privileges and write locking 
requirements are satisfied.  Any 
implementation-defined privilege that also controls access to methods modifying 
content, dead properties or collection membership must be aggregated under 
DAV:write, e.g. if an ACL grants access to DAV:write, the client may expect that 
no other privilege needs to be granted to have access to PUT and PROPPATCH.  
<!ELEMENT write 
EMPTY>
The 
DAV:write-properties privilege controls methods that modify the dead properties 
of the resource, such as PROPPATCH.  
Whether this privilege may be used to control access to any live 
properties is determined by the implementation.  Any implementation-defined privilege 
that also controls access to methods 
modifying dead properties must be aggregated under DAV:write-properties—e.g. if 
an ACL grants access to DAV:write-properties, the client can safely expect that 
no other privilege needs to be granted to have access to 
PROPPATCH.
<!ELEMENT write-properties 
EMPTY>
The 
DAV:write-content privilege controls methods that modify the content or (in the case of a 
collection) membership of the resource, such as PUT and DELETE.  Any implementation-defined privilege 
that also controls access to content or 
alteration of collection membership must be aggregated under 
DAV:write-content—e.g. if an ACL grants access to DAV:write-content, the client 
can safely expect that no other privilege needs to be granted to have access to 
PUT or DELETE.
<!ELEMENT write-content 
EMPTY>
The DAV:unlock privilege controls the use of the UNLOCK method by a principal other than the lock owner (the principal that created a lock can always perform an UNLOCK). While the set of users who may lock a resource is most commonly the same set of users who may modify a resource, servers may allow various kinds of administrators to unlock resources locked by others. Any privilege controlling access by non-lock owners to UNLOCK MUST be aggregated under DAV:unlock.
A lock owner can always remove a lock by issuing an UNLOCK with the correct lock token and authentication credentials. That is, even if a principal does not have DAV:unlock privilege, they can still remove locks they own. Principals other than the lock owner can remove a lock only if they have DAV:unlock privilege and they issue an UNLOCK with the correct lock token. Lock timeout is not affected by the DAV:unlock privilege.
<!ELEMENT unlock 
EMPTY>
The DAV:read-acl privilege controls 
the use of PROPFIND to retrieve the DAV:acl property of the 
resource.
<!ELEMENT read-acl 
EMPTY>
The 
DAV:read-current-user-privilege-set privilege controls the use of PROPFIND to 
retrieve the DAV:current-user-privilege-set property of the resource. 
Clients are intended to use this 
property to visually indicate in their UI items that are dependent on the 
permissions of a resource, for example, by graying out resources that are not 
writeable.
This privilege is separate from 
DAV:read-acl because there is a need to allow most users access to the 
privileges permitted the current user (due to its use in creating the UI), while 
the full ACL contains information that may not be appropriate for the current 
authenticated user. As a result, the set of users who can view the full ACL is 
expected to be much smaller than those who can read the current user privilege 
set, and hence distinct privileges are needed for 
each.
<!ELEMENT 
read-current-user-privilege-set EMPTY>
The DAV:write-acl privilege 
controls use of the ACL method to modify the DAV:acl property of the 
resource.
<!ELEMENT write-acl 
EMPTY>
The DAV:bind privilege allows a 
method to add a new member URL to the specified collection (for example via PUT 
or MKCOL).  It is ignored for 
resources that are not collections.  
<!ELEMENT bind 
EMPTY>
The DAV:unbind privilege allows a 
method to remove a member URL from the specified collection (for example via 
DELETE or MOVE).  It is ignored for 
resources that are not collections.  
<!ELEMENT unbind 
EMPTY>
DAV:all is an aggregate privilege 
that contains the entire set of privileges that can be applied to the 
resource.
<!ELEMENT all 
EMPTY>
Server implementations are free to 
aggregate the predefined privileges (defined above in Sections 3.1-3.9) subject to the following 
limitations:
DAV:read-acl MUST NOT contain 
DAV:read, DAV:write, DAV:write-acl, DAV:write-properties, DAV:write-content, or 
DAV:read-current-user-privilege-set.
DAV:write-acl MUST NOT contain 
DAV:write, DAV:read, DAV:read-acl, or 
DAV:read-current-user-privilege-set.
DAV:read-current-user-privilege-set 
MUST NOT contain DAV:write, DAV:read, DAV:read-acl, or 
DAV:write-acl.
DAV:write MUST NOT contain 
DAV:read, DAV:read-acl, or 
DAV:read-current-user-privilege-set.
DAV:read MUST NOT contain 
DAV:write, DAV:write-acl, DAV:write-properties, or 
DAV:write-content.
DAV:write MUST contain 
DAV:write-properties and DAV:write-content.
Principals are manifested to 
clients as a WebDAV resource, identified by a URL.  A principal MUST have a non-empty 
DAV:displayname property (defined in Section 13.2 of [RFC2518]), and a 
DAV:resourcetype property (defined in Section 13.9 of [RFC2518]).  Additionally, a principal MUST report 
the DAV:principal XML element in the value of the DAV:resourcetype 
property.  The element type 
declaration for DAV:principal is:
<!ELEMENT principal 
EMPTY>
 
This protocol defines the following 
additional properties for a principal. Since it can be expensive for a server to 
retrieve access control information, the name and value of these properties 
SHOULD NOT be returned by a PROPFIND allprop request (as defined in Section 
12.14.1 of [RFC2518]). 
This protected property, if non-empty, contains the URIs of network resources with additional descriptive information about the principal. This property identifies additional network resources (i.e., it contains one or more URIs) that may be consulted by a client to gain additional knowledge concerning a principal. One expected use for this property is the storage of an LDAP [RFC2255] scheme URL. A user-agent encountering an LDAP URL could use LDAP [RFC2589] to retrieve additional machine-readable directory information about the principal, and display that information in its user interface. Support for this property is REQUIRED, and the value is empty if no alternate URI exists for the principal.
<!ELEMENT alternate-URI-set (href*)>
A principal may have many URLs, but there must be one "principal URL" that clients can use to uniquely identify a principal. This protected property contains the URL that MUST be used to identify this principal in an ACL request. Support for this property is REQUIRED.
<!ELEMENT principal-URL (href)>
This property of a group principal identifies the principals that are direct members of this group. Since a group may be a member of another group, a group may also have indirect members (i.e. the members of its direct members). A URL in the DAV:group-member-set for a principal MUST be the DAV:principal-URL of that principal.
<!ELEMENT group-member-set (href*)>
 
This protected property identifies the groups in which the principal is directly a member. Note that a server may allow a group to be a member of another group, in which case the DAV:group-membership of those other groups would need to be queried in order to determine the groups in which the principal is indirectly a member. Support for this property is REQUIRED.
<!ELEMENT group-membership (href*)>
 
This specification defines a number 
of new properties for WebDAV resources.  
Access control properties may be retrieved just like other WebDAV 
properties, using the PROPFIND method.  
Since it is expensive, for many servers, to retrieve access control 
information, a PROPFIND allprop request (as defined in Section 12.14.1 of 
[RFC2518]) SHOULD NOT return the names and values of the properties defined in 
this section.
Access control properties 
(especially DAV:acl and DAV:inherited-acl-set) are defined on the resource 
identified by the Request-URI of a PROPFIND request. A direct consequence is 
that if the resource is accessible via multiple URI, the value of access control 
properties is the same across these URI.
HTTP resources that support the 
WebDAV Access Control Protocol MUST contain the following properties. Null 
resources (described in Section 3 of [RFC2518]) MUST NOT contain the following 
properties.
This protected property identifies 
a particular principal as being the "owner" of the resource. Since the owner of 
a resource often has special access control capabilities (e.g., the owner 
frequently has permanent DAV:write-acl privilege), clients might display the 
resource owner in their user interface.
<!ELEMENT owner (href)>
This example shows a client request 
for the value of the DAV:owner property from a collection resource with URL 
http://www.example.com/papers/. The principal making the request is 
authenticated using Digest authentication. The value of DAV:owner is the URL 
http://www.example.com/acl/users/gstein, wrapped in the DAV:href XML 
element.
>> 
Request <<
 
PROPFIND /papers/ 
HTTP/1.1
Host: 
www.example.com
Content-type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
Depth: 
0
Authorization: Digest 
username="jim", 
   realm="jim@webdav.org", 
nonce="...",
   uri="/papers/", response="...", 
opaque="..."
 
<?xml version="1.0" 
encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:propfind 
xmlns:D="DAV:">
  
<D:prop>
    
<D:owner/>
  
</D:prop>
</D:propfind>
 
>> Response 
<<
 
HTTP/1.1 207 
Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:multistatus xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/papers/</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
            
<D:owner>
             
  <D:href>http://www.example.com/acl/users/gstein</D:href>       
            
</D:owner>
         
</D:prop>
         
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
     
</D:propstat>
   
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>
The following example shows a 
client request to modify the value of the DAV:owner property on the resource 
with URL <http://www.example.com/papers>. Since DAV:owner is a protected 
property, the server responds with a 207 (Multi-Status) response that contains a 
403 (Forbidden) status code for the act of setting DAV:owner. Section 8.2.1 of 
[RFC2518] describes PROPPATCH status code information, and Section 11 of 
[RFC2518] describes the Multi-Status response.
>> 
Request <<
 
PROPPATCH /papers/ 
HTTP/1.1
Host: 
www.example.com
Content-type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
Depth: 
0
Authorization: Digest 
username="jim", 
   realm="jim@webdav.org", 
nonce="...",
   uri="/papers/", response="...", 
opaque="..."
 
<?xml version="1.0" 
encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:propertyupdate xmlns:D="DAV:">
   
<D:set>
      
<D:prop>
         
<D:owner>
            
<D:href>http://www.example.com/acl/users/jim</D:href>
         
</D:owner>
      
</D:prop>
   
</D:set>
</D:propertyupdate>
 
>> Response 
<<
 
HTTP/1.1 207 
Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:multistatus xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/papers/</D:href>
<D:propstat>
         
<D:prop><D:owner/></D:prop>
         
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 403 
Forbidden</D:status>
         
<D:responsedescription>
           
Failure to set protected property 
(DAV:owner)
         
</D:responsedescription>
      
</D:propstat>
   
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>
 
This is a protected property that 
identifies the privileges defined for the resource.  
<!ELEMENT supported-privilege-set (supported-privilege*)>
 
Each privilege appears as an XML element, where aggregate privileges list as sub-elements all of the privileges that they aggregate.
<!ELEMENT supported-privilege
(privilege, abstract?, description, supported-privilege*)>
<!ELEMENT privilege ANY>
 
An abstract privilege MUST NOT be used in an ACE for that resource. Servers MUST fail an attempt to set an abstract privilege.
<!ELEMENT abstract EMPTY>
 
A description is a human-readable description of what this privilege controls access to. Servers MUST indicate the human language of the description using the xml:lang attribute and SHOULD consider the HTTP Accept-Language request header when selecting one of multiple available languages.
<!ELEMENT description #PCDATA>
 
It is envisioned that a WebDAV 
ACL-aware administrative client would list the supported privileges in a dialog 
box, and allow the user to choose non-abstract privileges to apply in an 
ACE.  The privileges tree is useful 
programmatically to map well-known privileges (defined by WebDAV or other 
standards groups) into privileges that are supported by any particular server 
implementation.  The privilege tree 
also serves to hide complexity in implementations allowing large number of 
privileges to be defined by displaying aggregates to the 
user.
This example shows a client request 
for the DAV:supported-privilege-set property on the resource 
http://www.example.com/papers/. The 
value of the DAV:supported-privilege-set property is a tree of supported 
privileges (using "[XML Namespace , localname]" to identify each 
privilege):
   
[DAV:, all] (aggregate, abstract)
      
|
      +-- [DAV:, read] 
(aggregate)
             
|
             
+-- [DAV:, read-acl] (abstract)
             
+-- [DAV:, read-current-user-privilege-set] 
(abstract)
      
|
      +-- [DAV:, 
write] (aggregate)
             
|
             
+-- [DAV:, write-acl] (abstract)
             
+-- [DAV:, write-properties]
             
+-- [DAV:, write-content]
      
|
      +-- [DAV:, 
unlock] 
 
This privilege tree is not normative 
(except that it reflects the normative aggregation rules given in Section 3.12), and many possible privilege trees are 
possible.
 
>> 
Request <<
 
PROPFIND /papers/ 
HTTP/1.1
Host: 
www.example.com
Content-type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
Depth: 
0
Authorization: Digest 
username="gclemm", 
   realm="gclemm@webdav.org", 
nonce="...",
   uri="/papers/", response="...", 
opaque="..."
 
<?xml version="1.0" 
encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:propfind 
xmlns:D="DAV:">
  
<D:prop>
    
<D:supported-privilege-set/>
  
</D:prop>
</D:propfind>
 
>> Response 
<<
 
HTTP/1.1 207 
Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:multistatus xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/papers/</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<D:supported-privilege-set>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <D:all/> </D:privilege>
<D:abstract/>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Any operation</D:description>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <D:read/> </D:privilege>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Read any object</D:description>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <D:read-acl/> </D:privilege>
<D:abstract/>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Read ACL</D:description>
</D:supported-privilege>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege>
<D:read-current-user-privilege-set/>
</D:privilege>
<D:abstract/>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Read current user privilege set property</D:description>
</D:supported-privilege>
</D:supported-privilege>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <D:write/> </D:privilege>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Write any object</D:description>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <D:write-acl/> </D:privilege>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Write ACL</D:description>
<D:abstract/>
</D:supported-privilege>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <D:write-properties/> </D:privilege>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Write properties</D:description>
</D:supported-privilege>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <D:write-content/> </D:privilege>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Write resource content</D:description>
</D:supported-privilege>
</D:supported-privilege>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <D:unlock/> </D:privilege>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Unlock resource</D:description>
</D:supported-privilege>
</D:supported-privilege>
</D:supported-privilege-set>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>
DAV:current-user-privilege-set is a 
protected property containing the exact set of privileges (as computed by the 
server) granted to the currently authenticated HTTP user. Aggregate privileges 
and their contained privileges are listed. A user-agent can use the value of 
this property to adjust its user interface to make actions inaccessible (e.g., 
by graying out a menu item or button) for which the current principal does not 
have permission. This property is also useful for determining what operations 
the current principal can perform, without having to actually execute an 
operation.
<!ELEMENT current-user-privilege-set (privilege*)>
<!ELEMENT privilege ANY>
 
If the current user is granted a 
specific privilege, that privilege must belong to the set of privileges that may 
be set on this resource. Therefore, each element in the 
DAV:current-user-privilege-set property MUST identify a non-abstract privilege 
from the DAV:supported-privilege-set property.
Continuing the example from Section 5.2.1, this example shows a client requesting the DAV:current-user-privilege-set property from the resource with URL http://www.example.com/papers/. The username of the principal making the request is "khare", and Digest authentication is used in the request. The principal with username "khare" has been granted the DAV:read privilege. Since the DAV:read privilege contains the DAV:read-acl and DAV:read-current-user-privilege-set privileges (see Section 5.2.1), the principal with username "khare" can read the ACL property, and the DAV:current-user-privilege-set property. However, the DAV:all, DAV:read-acl, DAV:write-acl and DAV:read-current-user-privilege-set privileges are not listed in the value of DAV:current-user-privilege-set, since (for this example) they are abstract privileges. DAV:write is not listed since the principal with username "khare" is not listed in an ACE granting that principal write permission.
>> 
Request <<
 
PROPFIND /papers/ 
HTTP/1.1
Host: 
www.example.com
Content-type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
Depth: 
0
Authorization: Digest 
username="khare", 
   realm="khare@webdav.org", 
nonce="...",
   uri="/papers/", response="...", 
opaque="..."
 
<?xml version="1.0" 
encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:propfind 
xmlns:D="DAV:">
  
<D:prop>
    
<D:current-user-privilege-set/>
  
</D:prop>
</D:propfind>
 
>> Response 
<<
 
HTTP/1.1 207 
Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:multistatus xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/papers/</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<D:current-user-privilege-set>
<D:privilege> <D:read/> </D:privilege>
</D:current-user-privilege-set>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>
This is a protected property that 
specifies the list of access control entries (ACEs), which define what 
principals are to get what privileges for this 
resource.
<!ELEMENT acl (ace*) >
 
Each DAV:ace element specifies the 
set of privileges to be either granted or denied to a single principal.  If the DAV:acl property is empty, no 
principal is granted any privilege.
<!ELEMENT ace (invert | principal, (grant|deny), protected?, inherited?)>
The DAV:principal element 
identifies the principal to which this ACE applies.
<!ELEMENT principal ((href)
| all | authenticated | unauthenticated
| property | self)>
 
The current user matches DAV:href only if that user is authenticated as being (or being a member of) the principal identified by the URL contained by that DAV:href.
The current user always matches 
DAV:all. 
<!ELEMENT all EMPTY>
 
The current user matches 
DAV:authenticated only if authenticated.
<!ELEMENT authenticated EMPTY>
 
The current user matches 
DAV:unauthenticated only if not authenticated.
<!ELEMENT unauthenticated EMPTY>
 
DAV:all is the union of 
DAV:authenticated, and DAV:unauthenticated. For a given request, the user 
matches either DAV:authenticated, or DAV:unauthenticated, but not both (that is, 
DAV:authenticated and DAV:unauthenticated are disjoint 
sets).
The current user matches a 
DAV:property principal in a DAV:acl property of a resource only if the value of 
the identified property of that resource contains at most one DAV:href XML 
element, the URI value of DAV:href identifies a principal, and the current user 
is authenticated as being (or being a member of) that principal.  For example, if the DAV:property element 
contained <DAV:owner/>, the current user would match the DAV:property 
principal only if the current user is authenticated as matching the principal 
identified by the DAV:owner property of the 
resource.
<!ELEMENT property ANY>
 
Alternately, some servers may 
support ACEs applying to those users NOT matching the current principal, e.g. 
all users not in a particular group.  
This can be done by wrapping the DAV:principal element with DAV:invert. 
<!ELEMENT invert principal>
 
The current user matches DAV:self 
in a DAV:acl property of the resource only if that resource is a principal and 
that principal matches the current user or, if the principal is a group, a 
member of that group matches the current user.
<!ELEMENT self EMPTY>
Each DAV:grant or DAV:deny element 
specifies the set of privileges to be either granted or denied to the specified 
principal.  A DAV:grant or DAV:deny 
element of the DAV:acl of a resource MUST only contain non-abstract elements 
specified in the DAV:supported-privilege-set of that 
resource.
<!ELEMENT grant (privilege+)>
<!ELEMENT deny (privilege+)>
<!ELEMENT privilege ANY>
A server indicates an ACE is 
protected by including the DAV:protected element in the ACE. If the ACL of a 
resource contains an ACE with a DAV:protected element, an attempt to remove that 
ACE from the ACL MUST fail.
<!ELEMENT protected EMPTY>
The presence of a DAV:inherited 
element indicates that this ACE is inherited from another resource that is 
identified by the URL contained in a DAV:href element.  An inherited ACE cannot be modified 
directly, but instead the ACL on the resource from which it is inherited must be 
modified.
Note that ACE inheritance is not 
the same as ACL initialization.  ACL 
initialization defines the ACL that a newly created resource will use (if not 
specified).  ACE inheritance refers 
to an ACE that is logically shared - where an update to the resource containing 
an ACE will affect the ACE of each resource that inherits that ACE.  The method by which ACLs are initialized 
or by which ACEs are inherited is not defined by this 
document.
<!ELEMENT inherited (href)>
Continuing the example from Sections 5.2.1 and 5.3.1, this example shows a client requesting the DAV:acl property from the resource with URL http://www.example.com/papers/. There are two ACEs defined in this ACL:
ACE #1: The group identified by URL http://www.example.com/acl/groups/maintainers (the group of site maintainers) is granted DAV:write privilege. Since (for this example) DAV:write contains the DAV:write-acl privilege (see Section 5.2.1), this means the "maintainers" group can also modify the access control list.
ACE #2: All principals (DAV:all) are granted the DAV:read privilege. Since (for this example) DAV:read contains DAV:read-acl and DAV:read-current-user-privilege-set, this means all users (including all members of the "maintainers" group) can read the DAV:acl property and the DAV:current-user-privilege-set property.
 
>> 
Request <<
 
PROPFIND /papers/ 
HTTP/1.1
Host: 
www.example.com
Content-type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
Depth: 
0
Authorization: Digest 
username="masinter", 
   realm="webdav.org", 
nonce="...",
   uri="/papers/", response="...", 
opaque="..."
 
<D:propfind 
xmlns:D="DAV:">
  
<D:prop>
    
<D:acl/>
  
</D:prop>
</D:propfind>
 
>> Response 
<<
 
HTTP/1.1 207 
Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
 
<D:multistatus xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/papers/</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
        
<D:acl>
          
<D:ace>
            
<D:principal>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/acl/groups/maintainers</D:href>
            
</D:principal> 
            
<D:grant>
              
<D:privilege> <D:write/> 
</D:privilege>
            
</D:grant>
          
</D:ace>
          
<D:ace>
            
<D:principal>
              
<D:all/>
            
</D:principal>
            
<D:grant>
              
<D:privilege> <D:read/> </D:privilege> 
            
</D:grant>
          
</D:ace>
        
</D:acl>
      
</D:prop>
      
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
    
</D:propstat>
  
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>
 
This protected property defines the 
types of ACLs supported by this server, to avoid clients needlessly getting 
errors.  When a client tries to set 
an ACL via the ACL method, the server may reject the attempt to set the ACL as 
specified.  The following properties 
indicate the restrictions the client must observe before setting an 
ACL:
                
<grant-only>                      
Deny ACEs are not supported
                
<no-invert>                   
Inverted ACEs are not supported
                
<deny-before-grant>                
All deny ACEs must occur before any grant 
ACEs
                
<required-principal>                
Indicates which principals are required to be 
present
 
<!ELEMENT acl-restrictions (grant-only?, no-invert?, deny-before-grant?, required-principal?)>
 
This element indicates that ACEs with deny clauses are not allowed.
<!ELEMENT grant-only EMPTY>
This element indicates that ACEs with the <invert> element are not allowed.
<!ELEMENT no-invert EMPTY>
This element indicates that all deny ACEs must precede all grant ACEs.
<!ELEMENT deny-before-grant EMPTY>
The required principal elements 
identify which principals must have an ACE defined in the ACL.  
<!ELEMENT required-principal
(all? | authenticated? | unauthenticated? | self? | href* | property*)>
 
For example, the following element 
requires that the ACL contain a DAV:owner property 
ACE:
<D:required-principal xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:property> <D:owner/> </D:property>
</D:required-principal>
 
In this example, the client requests the value of the DAV:acl-restrictions property. Digest authentication provides credentials for the principal operating the client.
 
>> 
Request <<
 
PROPFIND /papers/ 
HTTP/1.1
Host: 
www.example.com
Content-type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
Depth: 
0
Authorization: Digest 
username="srcarter", 
   realm="srcarter@webdav.org", 
nonce="...",
   uri="/papers/", response="...", 
opaque="..."
 
<?xml version="1.0" 
encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:propfind 
xmlns:D="DAV:">
  
<D:prop>
    
<D:acl-restrictions/>
  
</D:prop>
</D:propfind>
 
>> Response 
<<
 
HTTP/1.1 207 
Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:multistatus xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/papers/</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<D:acl-restrictions>
<D:principal-only-one-ace/>
<D:required-principal>
<D:all/>
</D:required-principal>
</D:acl-restrictions>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
<D:response>
</D:multistatus>
 
This protected property contains a 
set of URLs that identify other resources that also control the access to this 
resource.  To have a privilege on a 
resource, not only must the ACL on that resource (specified in the DAV:acl 
property of that resource) grant the privilege, but so must the ACL of each 
resource identified in the DAV:inherited-acl-set property of that resource.  Effectively, the privileges granted by 
the current ACL are ANDed with the privileges granted by each inherited 
ACL.
<!ELEMENT inherited-acl-set (href*)>
 
This protected property of a resource contains a set of URLs that identify the root collections that contain the principals that are available on the server that implements this resource. A WebDAV Access Control Protocol user agent could use the contents of DAV:principal-collection-set to retrieve the DAV:displayname property (specified in Section 13.2 of [RFC2518]) of all principals on that server, thereby yielding human-readable names for each principal that could be displayed in a user interface.
<!ELEMENT principal-collection-set (href*)>
Since different servers can control different parts of the URL namespace, different resources on the same host MAY have different DAV:principal-collection-set values. The collections specified in the DAV:principal-collection-set MAY be located on different hosts from the resource. The URLs in DAV:principal-collection-set SHOULD be http or https scheme URLs. For security and scalability reasons, a server MAY report only a subset of the entire set of known principal collections, and therefore clients should not assume they have retrieved an exhaustive listing. Additionally, a server MAY elect to report none of the principal collections it knows about, in which case the property value would be empty.
The value of DAV:principal-collection-set gives the scope of the DAV:principal-property-search REPORT (defined in Section 9.4). Clients use the DAV:principal-property-search REPORT to populate their user interface with a list of principals. Therefore, servers that limit a client's ability to obtain principal information will interfere with the client's ability to manipulate access control lists, due to the difficulty of getting the URL of a principal for use in an ACE.
In this example, the client requests the value of the DAV:principal-collection-set property on the collection resource identified by URL http://www.example.com/papers/. The property contains the two URLs, http://www.example.com/acl/users/ and http://www.example.com/acl/groups/, both wrapped in DAV:href XML elements. Digest authentication provides credentials for the principal operating the client.
The client might reasonably follow this request with two separate PROPFIND requests to retrieve the DAV:displayname property of the members of the two collections (/acl/users and /acl/groups). This information could be used when displaying a user interface for creating access control entries.
 
>> 
Request <<
 
PROPFIND /papers/ 
HTTP/1.1
Host: 
www.example.com
Content-type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
Depth: 
0
Authorization: Digest 
username="yarong", 
   realm="yarong@webdav.org", 
nonce="...",
   uri="/papers/", response="...", 
opaque="..."
 
<?xml version="1.0" 
encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:propfind 
xmlns:D="DAV:">
  
<D:prop>
    
<D:principal-collection-set/>
  
</D:prop>
</D:propfind>
 
>> Response 
<<
 
HTTP/1.1 207 
Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:multistatus xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/papers/</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<D:principal-collection-set>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/acl/users/</D:href>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/acl/groups/</D:href>
</D:principal-collection-set>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>
The following example shows how 
access control information can be retrieved by using the PROPFIND method to 
fetch the values of the DAV:owner, DAV:supported-privilege-set, 
DAV:current-user-privilege-set, and DAV:acl properties. 
>> 
Request <<
 
PROPFIND /top/container/ 
HTTP/1.1
Host: 
www.example.com
Content-type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
Depth: 
0
Authorization: Digest 
username="ejw", 
   realm="users@foo.org", 
nonce="...",
   uri="/top/container/", 
response="...", opaque="..."
 
<?xml version="1.0" 
encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:propfind 
xmlns:D="DAV:">
  
<D:prop>
    
<D:owner/>
    
<D:supported-privilege-set/>
    
<D:current-user-privilege-set/>
    
<D:acl/>
  
</D:prop>
</D:propfind>
 
>> Response 
<<
 
HTTP/1.1 207 
Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:multistatus
xmlns:D="DAV:"
xmlns:A="http://www.example.com/acl/"> <D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/top/container/</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
    
<D:owner>
      
<D:href>http://www.example.com/users/gclemm</D:href> 
</D:owner>
<D:supported-privilege-set>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <D:all/> </D:privilege>
<D:abstract/>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Any operation</D:description>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <D:read/> </D:privilege>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Read any object</D:description>
</D:supported-privilege>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <D:write/> </D:privilege>
<D:abstract/>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Write any object</D:description>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <A:create/> </D:privilege>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Create an object</D:description>
</D:supported-privilege>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <A:update/> </D:privilege>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Update an object</D:description>
</D:supported-privilege>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <A:unbind/> </D:privilege>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Remove binding to an object</D:description>
</D:supported-privilege>
</D:supported-privilege>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <D:read-acl/> </D:privilege>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Read the ACL</D:description>
</D:supported-privilege>
<D:supported-privilege>
<D:privilege> <D:write-acl/> </D:privilege>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Write the ACL</D:description>
</D:supported-privilege>
</D:supported-privilege>
</D:supported-privilege-set>
    
<D:current-user-privilege-set>
      
<D:privilege> <D:read/> 
</D:privilege>
      
<D:privilege> <D:read-acl/> 
</D:privilege>
    
</D:current-user-privilege-set>
    
<D:acl>
      
<D:ace>
        
<D:principal>
          <D:href>http://www.example.com/users/esedlar</D:href>
          
</D:principal> 
        
<D:grant>
          
<D:privilege> <D:read/> 
</D:privilege>
          
<D:privilege> <D:write/> 
</D:privilege>
          
<D:privilege> <D:read-acl/> </D:privilege> 
</D:grant>
      
</D:ace>
      
<D:ace>
        
<D:principal>
          
<D:href>http://www.example.com/groups/marketing</D:href>
        
</D:principal>
        
<D:deny>
          
<D:privilege> <D:read/> </D:privilege> 
</D:deny>
      
</D:ace>
      
<D:ace>
        
<D:principal>
          
<D:property> <D:owner/> </D:property> 
</D:principal>
        
<D:grant>
          
<D:privilege> <D:read-acl/> 
</D:privilege>
          
<D:privilege> <D:write-acl/> </D:privilege> 
</D:grant>
      
</D:ace>
      
<D:ace>
        <D:principal> <D:all/> 
</D:principal>
        
<D:grant>
          
<D:privilege> <D:read/> 
</D:privilege></D:grant>
        
<D:inherited>
          
<D:href>http://www.example.com/top</D:href> 
</D:inherited>
      </D:ace> 
</D:acl>
    </D:prop>
    
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat> </D:response> </D:multistatus>
 
The value of the DAV:owner property is a single 
DAV:href XML element containing the URL of the principal that owns this 
resource. 
The value of the DAV:supported-privilege-set 
property is a tree of supported privileges (using "[XML Namespace , localname]" 
to identify each privilege):
   
[DAV:, all] (aggregate, abstract)
      
|
      +-- [DAV:, 
read]
      +-- [DAV:, 
write] (aggregate, abstract)
             
|
             
+-- [http://www.example.com/acl, create]
             
+-- [http://www.example.com/acl, update]
             
+-- [http://www.example.com/acl, delete]
      +-- [DAV:, 
read-acl]
      +-- [DAV:, 
write-acl]
 
The DAV:current-user-privilege-set property 
contains two privileges, DAV:read, and DAV:read-acl. This indicates that the 
current authenticated user only has the ability to read the resource, and read 
the DAV:acl property on the resource.
The DAV:acl property contains a set of four 
ACEs:
ACE #1: The principal identified by the URL 
http://www.example.com/users/esedlar is granted the DAV:read, DAV:write, and 
DAV:read-acl privileges.
ACE #2: The principals identified by the URL 
http://www.example.com/groups/marketing are denied the DAV:read privilege.  In this example, the principal URL 
identifies a group.
ACE #3: In this ACE, the principal is a 
property principal, specifically the DAV:owner property. When evaluating this 
ACE, the value of the DAV:owner property is retrieved, and is examined to see if 
it contains a DAV:href XML element. If so, the URL within the DAV:href element 
is read, and identifies a principal. In this ACE, the owner is granted 
DAV:read-acl, and DAV:write-acl privileges.
ACE #4: This ACE grants the DAV:all principal 
(all users) the DAV:read privilege. This ACE is inherited from the resource 
http://www.example.com/top, the parent collection of this 
resource.
WebDAV ACLs are evaluated in 
similar manner as ACLs on Windows NT and in NFSv4 [NFSV4]).  An ACL is evaluated to determine whether 
or not access will be granted for a WebDAV request.  ACEs are maintained in a particular 
order, and are evaluated until all of the permissions required by the current 
request have been granted, at which point the ACL evaluation is terminated and 
access is granted.  If, during ACL 
evaluation, a <deny> ACE (matching the current user) is encountered for a 
privilege which has not yet been granted, the ACL evaluation is terminated and 
access is denied.  Failure to have 
all required privileges granted results in access being 
denied.
 
Note that the semantics of many 
other existing ACL systems may be represented via this mechanism, by mixing deny 
and grant ACEs.  For example, 
consider the standard "rwx" privilege scheme used by UNIX.  In this scheme, if the current user is 
the owner of the file, access is granted if the corresponding privilege bit is 
set and denied if not set, regardless of the permissions set on the file’s group 
and for the world.  An ACL for UNIX 
permissions of "r--rw-r--"might be constructed 
like:
      
<D:acl>
      
<D:ace>
        
<D:principal><D:property><D:owner/></D:property></D:principal>
        
<D:grant><D:privilege><D:read/></D:privilege></D:grant>
      
</D:ace>
      
<D:ace>
        
<D:principal><D:property><D:owner/></D:property></D:principal>
        
<D:deny><D:privilege><D:all/></D:privilege></D:deny>
      
</D:ace>
      
<D:ace>
        
<D:principal><D:property><D:group/></D:property></D:principal>
        
<D:grant><D:privilege><D:read/></D:privilege>
                 
<D:privilege><D:write/></D:privilege></D:grant>
      
</D:ace>
      
<D:ace>
        
<D:principal><D:property><D:group/></D:property></D:principal>
        
<D:deny><D:privilege><D:all/></D:privilege></D:deny>
      
</D:ace>
      
<D:ace>
        
<D:principal><D:all></D:principal>
        
<D:grant><D:privilege><D:read/></D:privilege></D:grant>
      
</D:ace>
      
</D:acl>
and the <acl-restrictions> 
would be defined as:
<D:no-invert/><D:principal-only-one-ace/>
<D:required-principal>
  <D:all/>
  
<D:property><D:owner/></D:property>
  
<D:property><D:group/><D:group/>
</D:required-principal>
Note that the client can still get 
errors from a UNIX server in spite of obeying the <acl-restrictions>, 
including <D:allowed-principal> (adding an ACE specifying a principal 
other than the ones in the ACL above) or <D:ace-conflict> (by trying to 
reorder the ACEs in the example above), as these particular implementation 
semantics are too complex to be captured with the simple (but general) 
declarative restrictions.
This section defines the impact of access control functionality on existing methods.
The WebDAV ACL mechanism requires the usage of HTTP method "preconditions" as described in section 1.6 of RFC3253 for ALL HTTP methods. All HTTP methods have an additional precondition called DAV:need-privileges. If an HTTP method fails due to insufficient privileges, the response body to the "403 Forbidden" error MUST contain the <DAV:error> element, which in turn contains the <DAV:need-privileges> element, which contains one or more <DAV:resource> elements indicating which resource had insufficient privileges, and what the lacking privileges were:
<!ELEMENT need-privileges (resource)* >
<!ELEMENT resource ( href , privilege ) >
 
Since some methods require multiple 
permissions on multiple resources, this information is needed to resolve any 
ambiguity.  There is no requirement 
that all privilege violations be reported—for implementation reasons, some 
servers may only report the first privilege violation. For 
example:
>> Request 
<<
 
MOVE 
/a/b/ HTTP/1.1
Host: 
www.example.com
Destination: 
http://www.example.com/c/d
 
>> 
Response <<
 
HTTP/1.1 
403 Forbidden
Content-Type: 
text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
 
<D:error 
xmlns:D="DAV:">
  
<D:need-privileges>
    <D:resource>
      
<D:href>/a</D:href>
      
<D:privilege><D:unbind/></D:privilege>
    
</D:resource>
    
<D:resource>
      
<D:href>/c</D:href>
      
<D:privilege><D:bind/></D:privilege>
    
</D:resource>
  
</D:need-privileges>
</D:error>
If the server supports access control, it MUST return "access-control" as a field in the DAV response header from an OPTIONS request on any resource implemented by that server. A value of "access-control" in the DAV header MUST indicate that the server supports all MUST level requirements and REQUIRED features specified in this document.
>> Request <<
 
OPTIONS /foo.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Content-Length: 0
   
>> Response <<
 
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
DAV: 1, 2, access-control
Allow: OPTIONS, GET, PUT, PROPFIND, PROPPATCH, ACL
 
In this example, the OPTIONS response indicates that the server supports access control and that /foo.html can have its access control list modified by the ACL method.
When a resource is moved from one location to another due to a MOVE request, the non-inherited and non-protected ACEs in the DAV:acl property of the resource MUST NOT be modified, or the MOVE request fails. Handling of inherited and protected ACEs is intentionally undefined to give server implementations flexibility in how they implement ACE inheritance and protection.
The DAV:acl property on the resource at the destination of a COPY MUST be the same as if the resource was created by an individual resource creation request (e.g. MKCOL, PUT). Clients wishing to preserve the DAV:acl property across a copy need to read the DAV:acl property prior to the COPY, then perform an ACL operation on the new resource at the destination to restore, insofar as this is possible, the original access control list.
A lock on a resource ensures that only the lock owner can modify ACEs that are not inherited and not protected (these are the only ACEs that a client can modify with an ACL request). A lock does not protect inherited or protected ACEs, since a client cannot modify them with an ACL request on that resource.
The ACL method modifies the access 
control list (which can be read via the DAV:acl property) of a resource.  Specifically, the ACL method only 
permits modification to ACEs that are not inherited, and are not protected. An 
ACL method invocation modifies all non-inherited and non-protected ACEs in a 
resource's access control list to exactly match the ACEs contained within in the 
DAV:acl XML element (specified in Section 5.4) of the request body. An ACL request body MUST 
contain only one DAV:acl XML element. Unless the non-inherited and non-protected 
ACEs of the DAV:acl property of the resource can be updated to be exactly the 
value specified in the ACL request, the ACL request MUST fail. 
It is possible that the ACEs 
visible to the current user in the DAV:acl property may only be a portion of the 
complete set of ACEs on that resource. If this is the case, an ACL request only 
modifies the set of ACEs visible to the current user, and does not affect any 
non-visible ACE.
In order to avoid overwriting 
DAV:acl changes by another client, a client SHOULD acquire a WebDAV lock on the 
resource before retrieving the DAV:acl property of a resource that it intends on 
updating.
Implementation Note: Two common 
operations are to add or remove an ACE from an existing access control list. To 
accomplish this, a client uses the PROPFIND method to retrieve the value of the 
DAV:acl property, then parses the returned access control list to remove all 
inherited and protected ACEs (these ACEs are tagged with the DAV:inherited and 
DAV:protected XML elements). In the remaining set of non-inherited, 
non-protected ACEs, the client can add or remove one or more ACEs before 
submitting the final ACE set in the request body of the ACL 
method.
An implementation MUST enforce the 
following constraints on an ACL request.  
If the constraint is violated, a 403 (Forbidden) or 409 (Conflict) 
response MUST be returned and the indicated XML element MUST be returned as a 
child of a top level DAV:error element in an XML response 
body.
Though these status elements are 
generally expressed as empty XML elements (and are defined as EMPTY in the DTD), 
implementations MAY return additional descriptive XML elements as children of 
the status element. Clients MUST be able to accept children of these status 
elements. Clients that do not understand the additional XML elements should 
ignore them.
(DAV:no-ace-conflict): The ACEs 
submitted in the ACL request MUST NOT conflict with each other.  This is a catchall error code indicating 
that an implementation-specific ACL restriction has been 
violated.
(DAV:no-protected-ace-conflict): 
The ACEs submitted in the ACL request MUST NOT conflict with the protected ACEs 
on the resource. For example, if the resource has a protected ACE granting 
DAV:write to a given principal, then it would not be consistent if the ACL 
request submitted an ACE denying DAV:write to the same 
principal.
(DAV:no-inherited-ace-conflict): 
The ACEs submitted in the ACL request MUST NOT conflict with the inherited ACEs 
on the resource. For example, if the resource inherits an ACE from its parent 
collection granting DAV:write to a given principal, then it would not be 
consistent if the ACL request submitted an ACE denying DAV:write to the same 
principal. Note that reporting of this error will be implementation-dependent. 
Implementations MUST either report this error or allow the ACE to be set, and 
then let normal ACE evaluation rules determine whether the new ACE has any 
impact on the privileges available to a specific 
principal.
(DAV:limited-number-of-aces): The 
number of ACEs submitted in the ACL request MUST NOT exceed the number of ACEs 
allowed on that resource.  However, 
ACL-compliant servers MUST support at least one ACE granting privileges to a 
single principal, and one ACE granting privileges to a 
group.
(DAV:deny-before-grant): All 
non-inherited deny ACEs MUST precede all non-inherited grant 
ACEs.
 (DAV:grant-only): The ACEs submitted in 
the ACL request MUST NOT include a deny ACE.  This precondition applies only when the 
ACL restrictions of the resource include the DAV:grant-only constraint (defined 
in Section 5.5.1).
(DAV:no-invert):  The ACL request MUST NOT include a 
DAV:invert element.   This 
precondition applies only when the ACL semantics of the resource includes the 
DAV:no-invert constraint (defined in Section 
6.3.4).
(DAV:no-abstract): The ACL request 
MUST NOT attempt to grant or deny an abstract privilege (see Section 5.2).
(DAV:not-supported-privilege): The 
ACEs submitted in the ACL request MUST be supported by the 
resource.
(DAV:missing-required-principal): 
The result of the ACL request MUST have at least one ACE for each principal 
identified in a DAV:required-principal XML element in the ACL semantics of that 
resource (see Section 5.5.4).
(DAV:recognized-principal): Every 
principal URL in the ACL request MUST identify a principal 
resource.
(DAV:allowed-principal): The 
principals specified in the ACEs submitted in the ACL request MUST be allowed as 
principals for the resource. For example, a server where only authenticated 
principals can access resources would not allow the DAV:all or 
DAV:unauthenticated principals to be used in an ACE, since these would allow 
unauthenticated access to resources.
In the following example, user 
"fielding", authenticated by information in the Authorization header, grants the 
principal identified by the URL http://www.example.com/users/esedlar  (i.e., the user "esedlar") read and 
write privileges, grants the owner of the resource read-acl and write-acl 
privileges, and grants everyone read privileges. 
>> 
Request <<
 
ACL /top/container/ 
HTTP/1.1
Host: 
www.example.com
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxxx
Authorization: Digest 
username="fielding", 
   realm="users@foo.org", 
nonce="...",
   uri="/top/container/", 
response="...", opaque="..."
 
<?xml version="1.0" 
encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:acl 
xmlns:D="DAV:">
  
<D:ace>
    
<D:principal>
      
<D:href>http://www.example.com/users/esedlar</D:href>
    
</D:principal>
    
<D:grant>
      
<D:privilege> <D:read/> 
</D:privilege>
      
<D:privilege> <D:write/> </D:privilege> 
    
</D:grant>
  
</D:ace>
  
<D:ace>
    
<D:principal>
      
<D:property> <D:owner/> </D:property> 
    
</D:principal>
    
<D:grant>
      
<D:privilege> <D:read-acl/> 
</D:privilege>
      
<D:privilege> <D:write-acl/> </D:privilege> 
    
</D:grant>
  
</D:ace>
  
<D:ace>
    <D:principal> 
<D:all/> </D:principal>
    
<D:grant>
      
<D:privilege> <D:read/> 
</D:privilege>
    
</D:grant>
  
</D:ace> </D:acl>
 
>> 
Response <<
 
HTTP/1.1 200 
OK
In the following request, user 
"fielding", authenticated by information in the Authorization header, attempts 
to deny the principal identified by the URL 
http://www.example.com/users/esedlar  (i.e., the user "esedlar") write 
privileges. Prior to the request, the DAV:acl property on the resource contained 
a protected ACE (see Section 5.4.3) granting DAV:owner the DAV:read and DAV:write 
privileges. The principal identified by URL http://www.example.com/users/esedlar 
is the owner of the resource. The ACL method invocation fails because the 
submitted ACE conflicts with the protected ACE, thus violating the semantics of 
ACE 
protection.
>> Request 
<<
 
ACL /top/container/ 
HTTP/1.1
Host: 
www.example.com
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxxx
Authorization: Digest 
username="fielding", 
   realm="users@foo.org", 
nonce="...",
   uri="/top/container/", 
response="...", 
opaque="..."
 
<?xml version="1.0" 
encoding="utf-8" 
?>
<D:acl 
xmlns:D="DAV:">
  
<D:ace>
    
<D:principal>
      
<D:href>http://www.example.com/users/esedlar</D:href>
    
</D:principal>
    <D:deny> 
      
<D:privilege> <D:write/> </D:privilege> 
    
</D:deny>
  
</D:ace>
</D:acl>
 
>> Response 
<<
 
HTTP/1.1 403 
Forbidden
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:error xmlns:D="DAV:">
  
<D:no-protected-ace-conflict/>
</D:error>
In the following request, user "ejw", authenticated by information in the Authorization header, tries to change the access control list on the resource http://www.example.com/top/index.html. This resource has two inherited ACEs.
Inherited ACE #1 grants the principal identified by URL http://www.example.com/users/ejw (i.e., the user "ejw") http://www.example.com/privs/write-all and DAV:read-acl privileges. On this server, http://www.example.com/privs/write-all is an aggregate privilege containing DAV:write, and DAV:write-acl.
Inherited ACE #2 grants principal DAV:all the DAV:read privilege.
The request attempts to set a (non-inherited) ACE, denying the principal identified by the URL http://www.example.com/users/ejw (i.e., the user "ejw") DAV:write permission. This conflicts with inherited ACE #1. Note that the decision to report an inherited ACE conflict is specific to this server implementation. Another server implementation could have allowed the new ACE to be set, and then used normal ACE evaluation rules to determine whether the new ACE has any impact on the privileges available to a principal.
>> Request <<
 
ACL /top/index.html 
HTTP/1.1
Host: 
www.example.com
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxxx
Authorization: Digest 
username="ejw", 
   realm="users@foo.org", 
nonce="...",
   uri="/top/index.html", 
response="...", 
opaque="..."
 
<?xml version="1.0" 
encoding="utf-8" 
?>
<D:acl xmlns:D="DAV:" 
xmlns:F="http://www.example.com/privs/">
  
<D:ace>
      
<D:principal>
        
<D:href>http://www.example.com/users/ejw</D:href>
      
</D:principal>
      
<D:grant><D:write/></D:grant>
  
</D:ace>
</D:acl>
 
>> Response 
<<
 
HTTP/1.1 403 
Forbidden
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxx
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:error xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:no-inherited-ace-conflict xmlns:D="DAV:"/>
</D:error>
In this example, user "ygoland", authenticated by information in the Authorization header, tries to change the access control list on the resource http://www.example.com/diamond/engagement-ring.gif. The ACL request includes a single, syntactically and semantically incorrect ACE, which attempts to grant the group identified by the URL http://www.example.com/users/friends DAV:read privilege and deny the principal identified by URL http://www.example.com/users/ygoland-so (i.e., the user "ygoland-so") DAV:read privilege. However, it is illegal to have multiple principal elements, as well as both a grant and deny element in the same ACE, so the request fails due to poor syntax.
>> Request <<
 
ACL /diamond/engagement-ring.gif 
HTTP/1.1
Host: 
www.example.com
Content-Type: text/xml; 
charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: 
xxxx
Authorization: Digest 
username="ygoland", 
   realm="users@foo.org", 
nonce="...",
   
uri="/diamond/engagement-ring.gif", response="...", 
opaque="..."
 
<?xml version="1.0" 
encoding="utf-8" 
?>
<D:acl 
xmlns:D="DAV:">
    
<D:ace>
      
<D:principal>
        
<D:href>http://www.example.com/users/friends</D:href>
      
</D:principal>
      
<D:grant><D:read/></D:grant>
      
<D:principal>
        
<D:href>http://www.example.com/users/ygoland-so</D:href>
      
</D:principal>
      
<D:deny><D:read/></D:deny>
    
</D:ace>
</D:acl>
 
>> Response 
<<
 
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad 
Request
Content-Length: 
0
 
Note that if the request had been 
divided into two ACEs, one to grant, and one to deny, the request would have 
been syntactically well 
formed.
The REPORT method (defined in Section 3.6 of [RFC3253]) provides an extensible mechanism for obtaining information about a resource. Unlike the PROPFIND method, which returns the value of one or more named properties, the REPORT method can involve more complex processing. REPORT is valuable in cases where the server has access to all of the information needed to perform the complex request (such as a query), and where it would require multiple requests for the client to retrieve the information needed to perform the same request.
A server that supports the WebDAV Access Control Protocol MUST support the DAV:expand-property report (defined in Section 3.8 of [RFC3253]).
The DAV:acl-principal-prop-set 
report returns, for all principals in the DAV:acl property (of the Request-URI) 
that are identified by http(s) URLs or by a DAV:property principal, the value of 
the properties specified in the REPORT request body. In the case where a 
principal URL appears multiple times, the DAV:acl-principal-prop-set report MUST 
return the properties for that principal only once. Support for this report is 
REQUIRED.
One expected use of this report is 
to retrieve the human readable name (found in the DAV:displayname property) of 
each principal found in an ACL. This is useful for constructing user interfaces 
that show each ACE in a human readable 
form.
Marshalling
The request body MUST be a 
DAV:acl-principal-prop-set XML 
element.
<!ELEMENT acl-principal-prop-set ANY>
ANY value: a sequence of one or more elements, with at most one DAV:prop element.
prop: see RFC 2518, Section 12.11
 
This report is only defined when the Depth header has value "0"; other values result in a 400 (Bad Request) error response. Note that [RFC3253], Section 3.6, states that if the Depth header is not present, it defaults to a value of "0".
The response body for a successful request MUST be a DAV:multistatus XML element (i.e., the response uses the same format as the response for PROPFIND). In the case where there are no response elements, the returned multistatus XML element is empty.
multistatus: see RFC 2518, Section 12.9
 
The response body for a successful DAV:acl-principal-prop-set REPORT request MUST contain a DAV:response element for each principal identified by an http(s) URL listed in a DAV:principal XML element of an ACE within the DAV:acl property of the resource identified by the Request-URI.
Postconditions:
(DAV:number-of-matches-within-limits): The number of matching principals must fall within server-specific, predefined limits. For example, this condition might be triggered if a search specification would cause the return of an extremely large number of responses.
Resource 
http://www.example.com/index.html has an ACL with three 
ACEs:
ACE #1: All principals (DAV:all) 
have DAV:read and DAV:read-current-user-privilege-set 
access.
ACE #2: The principal identified by 
http://www.example.com/people/gstein (the user "gstein") is granted 
DAV:write,  DAV:write-acl, 
DAV:read-acl 
privileges.
ACE #3: The group identified by 
http://www.example.com/groups/authors (the "authors" group) is granted DAV:write 
and DAV:read-acl 
privileges.
The following example shows a 
DAV:acl-principal-prop-set report requesting the DAV:displayname property. It 
returns the value of DAV:displayname for resources 
http://www.example.com/people/gstein and http://www.example.com/groups/authors , 
but not for DAV:all, since this is not an http(s) URL. 
 
>> Request <<
 
REPORT /index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: xxxx
Depth: 0
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:acl-principal-prop-set xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:prop>
<D:displayname/>
</D:prop>
</D:acl-principal-prop-set>
 
>> Response 
<<
HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: xxxx
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:multistatus xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/people/gstein</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<D:displayname>Greg Stein</D:displayname>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/groups/authors</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<D:displayname>Site authors</D:displayname>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>
The DAV:principal-match REPORT is used to identify all members (at any depth) of the collection identified by the Request-URI that are principals and that match the current user. In particular, if the collection contains principals, the report can be used to identify all members of the collection that match the current user. Alternatively, if the collection contains resources that have a property that identifies a principal (e.g. DAV:owner), the report can be used to identify all members of the collection whose property identifies a principal that matches the current user. For example, this report can return all of the resources in a collection hierarchy that are owned by the current user. Support for this report is REQUIRED.
Marshalling:
The request body MUST be a DAV:principal-match XML element.
<!ELEMENT principal-match ((principal-property | self), prop?)>
<!ELEMENT principal-property ANY>
ANY value: an element whose value identifies a property. The expectation is the value of the named property typically contains an href element that contains the URI of a principal
<!ELEMENT self EMPTY>
prop: see RFC 2518, Section 12.11
 
This report is only defined when the Depth header has value "0"; other values result in a 400 (Bad Request) error response. Note that [RFC3253], Section 3.6, states that if the Depth header is not present, it defaults to a value of "0".
The response body for a successful request MUST be a DAV:multistatus XML element. In the case where there are no response elements, the returned multistatus XML element is empty.
multistatus: see RFC 2518, Section 12.9
 
The response body for a successful DAV:principal-match REPORT request MUST contain a DAV:response element for each member of the collection that matches the current user. When the DAV:principal-property element is used, a match occurs if the current user is matched by the principal identified by the URI found in the DAV:href element of the property identified by the DAV:principal-property element. When the DAV:self element is used in a DAV:principal-match report issued against a group, it matches the group if a member identifies the same principal as the current user.
If DAV:prop is specified in the request body, the properties specified in the DAV:prop element MUST be reported in the DAV:response elements.
The following example identifies the members of the collection identified by the URL http://www.example.com/doc that are owned by the current user. The current user ("gclemm") is authenticated using Digest authentication.
>> Request <<
REPORT /doc/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Authorization: Digest 
username="gclemm", 
   realm="gclemm@webdav.org", 
nonce="...",
   uri="/papers/", response="...", 
opaque="..."
Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: xxxx
Depth: 0
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:principal-match xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:principal-property>
<D:owner/>
</D:principal-property>
</D:principal-match>
 
>> Response <<
 
HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: xxxx
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:multistatus xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/doc/foo.html</D:href>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:response>
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/doc/img/bar.gif</D:href>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>
The DAV:principal-property-search REPORT performs a search for all principals whose properties contain character data that matches the search criteria specified in the request. One expected use of this report is to discover the URL of a principal associated with a given person or group by searching for them by name. This is done by searching over DAV:displayname, which is defined on all principals.
The actual search method (exact matching vs. substring matching vs, prefix-matching, case-sensitivity) deliberately is left to the server implementation to allow implementation on a wide set of possible user management systems. In cases where the implementation of DAV:principal-property-search is not constrained by the semantics of an underlying user management repository, preferred default semantics are caseless substring matches.
For implementation efficiency, servers do not typically support searching on all properties. A search requesting properties that are not searchable for a particular principal will not match that principal.
Support for the DAV:principal-property-search report is REQUIRED.
Implementation Note: The value of a WebDAV property is a sequence of well-formed XML, and hence can include any character in the Unicode/ISO-10646 standard, that is, most known characters in human languages. Due to the idiosyncrasies of case mapping across human languages, implementation of case-insensitive matching is non-trivial. Implementors of servers that do perform substring matching are strongly encouraged to consult [CaseMap], especially Section 2.3 ("Caseless Matching"), for guidance when implementing their case-insensitive matching algorithms.
Implementation Note: Some implementations of this protocol will use an LDAP repository for storage of principal metadata. The schema describing each attribute (akin to a WebDAV property) in an LDAP repository specifies whether it supports case-sensitive or caseless searching. One of the benefits of leaving the search method to the discretion of the server implementation is the default LDAP attribute search behavior can be used when implementing the DAV:principal-property-search report.
Marshalling:
The request body MUST be a DAV:principal-property-search XML element containing a search specification and an optional list of properties. For every principal that matches the search specification, the response will contain the value of the requested properties on that principal.
<!ELEMENT principal-property-search
((property-search+), prop?, apply-to-principal-collection-set?) >
 
By default, the report searches all members (at any depth) of the collection identified by the Request-URI. If DAV:apply-to-principal-collection-set is specified in the request body, the request is applied instead to each collection identified by the DAV:prinicipal-collection-set property of the resource identified by the Request-URI.
The DAV:property-search element contains a prop element enumerating the properties to be searched and a match element, containing the search string.
<!ELEMENT property-search (prop, match) >
prop: see RFC 2518, Section 12.11
<!ELEMENT match #PCDATA >
 
Multiple property-search elements or multiple elements within a DAV:prop element will be interpreted with a logical AND.
This report is only defined when the Depth header has value "0"; other values result in a 400 (Bad Request) error response. Note that [RFC3253], Section 3.6, states that if the Depth header is not present, it defaults to a value of "0".
The response body for a successful request MUST be a DAV:multistatus XML element. In the case where there are no response elements, the returned multistatus XML element is empty.
multistatus: see RFC 2518, Section 12.9
 
The response body for a successful DAV:principal-property-search REPORT request MUST contain a DAV:response element for each principal whose property values satisfy the search specification given in DAV:principal-property-search.
The response body for an unsuccessful DAV:principal-property-search REPORT request MUST contain, after the XML element indicating the failed precondition or postcondition, a DAV:prop element containing the property that caused the pre/postcondition to fail.
If DAV:prop is specified in the request body, the properties specified in the DAV:prop element MUST be reported in the DAV:response elements.
Preconditions:
None
Postconditions:
(DAV:number-of-matches-within-limits): 
The number of matching principals must fall within server-specific, predefined 
limits. For example, this condition might be triggered if a search specification 
would cause the return of an extremely large number of 
responses.
There are several cases to consider when matching strings. The easiest case is when a property value is "simple" and has only character information item content (see [REC-XML-INFOSET]). For example, the search string "julian" would match the DAV:displayname property with value "Julian Reschke". Note that the on-the-wire marshalling of DAV:displayname in this case is:
<D:displayname xmlns:D="DAV:">Julian Reschke</D:displayname>
 
The name of the property is encoded into the XML element information item, and the character information item content of the property is "Julian Reschke".
A more complicated case occurs when properties have mixed content (that is, compound values consisting of multiple child element items, other types of information items, and character information item content). Consider the property "aprop" in the namespace "http://www.example.com/props/", marshalled as:
<W:aprop 
xmlns:W="http://www.example.com/props/">
{cdata 
0}<W:elem1>{cdata 1}</W:elem1>
  <W:elem2>{cdata 
2}</W:elem2>{cdata 
3}
</W:aprop>
 
In this case, matching is performed on each individual contiguous sequence of character information items. In the example above, a search string would be compared to the four following strings:
{cdata 0}
{cdata 1}
{cdata 
2}
{cdata 3}
 
That is, four individual matches would be performed, one each for {cdata 0}, {cdata 1}, {cdata 2}, and {cdata 3}.
In this example, the client requests the principal URLs of all users whose DAV:displayname property contains the substring "doE" and whose "title" property in the namespace "http://BigCorp.com/ns/" (that is, their professional title) contains "Sales". In addition, the client requests five properties to be returned with the matching principals:
In 
the DAV: namespace: displayname
In the http://www.example.com/ns/ namespace: 
department, phone, office, 
salary
The response shows that two principal resources meet the search specification, "John Doe" and "Zygdoebert Smith". The property "salary" in namespace "http://www.example.com/ns/" is not returned, since the principal making the request does not have sufficient access permissions to read this property.
>> Request 
<<
REPORT /users/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: xxxx
Depth: 0
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:principal-property-search xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:property-search>
<D:prop>
<D:displayname/>
</D:prop>
<D:match>doE</D:match>
</D:property-search>
<D:property-search>
<D:prop xmlns:B="http://www.example.com/ns/">
<B:title/>
</D:prop>
<D:match>Sales</D:match>
</D:property-search>
<D:prop xmlns:B="http://www.example.com/ns/">
<D:displayname/>
<B:department/>
<B:phone/>
<B:office/>
<B:salary/>
</D:prop>
</D:principal-property-search>
 
>> Response 
<<
 
HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: xxxx
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:multistatus xmlns:D="DAV:" xmlns:B="http://BigCorp.com/ns/">
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/users/jdoe</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<D:displayname>John Doe</D:displayname>
<B:department>Widget Sales</B:department>
<B:phone>234-4567</B:phone>
<B:office>209</B:office>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<B:salary/>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
<D:response>
<D:href>http://www.example.com/users/zsmith</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<D:displayname>Zygdoebert Smith</D:displayname>
<B:department>Gadget Sales</B:department>
<B:phone>234-7654</B:phone>
<B:office>114</B:office>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
<B:salary/>
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>
 
The DAV:principal-search-property-set REPORT identifies those properties that may be searched using the DAV:principal-property-search REPORT (defined in Section 9.4).
Servers MUST support the DAV:principal-search-property-set REPORT on all collections identified in the value of a DAV:principal-collection-set property.
An access control protocol user agent could use the results of the DAV:principal-search-property-set REPORT to present a query interface to the user for retrieving principals.
Support for this report is 
REQUIRED.
Implementation Note: Some clients will have only limited screen real estate for the display of lists of searchable properties. In this case, a user might appreciate having the most frequently searched properties be displayed on-screen, rather than having to scroll through a long list of searchable properties. One mechanism for signaling the most frequently searched properties is to return them towards the start of a list of properties. A client can then preferentially display the list of properties in order, increasing the likelihood that the most frequently searched properties will appear on-screen, and will not require scrolling for their selection.
Marshalling:
The request body MUST be an empty DAV:principal-search-property-set XML element.
This report is only defined when the Depth header has value "0"; other values result in a 400 (Bad Request) error response. Note that [RFC3253], Section 3.6, states that if the Depth header is not present, it defaults to a value of "0".
The response body MUST be a DAV:principal-search-property-set XML element, containing a DAV:principal-search-property XML element for each property that may be searched with the DAV:principal-property-search REPORT. A server MAY limit its response to just a subset of the searchable properties, such as those likely to be useful to an interactive access control client.
<!ELEMENT principal-search-property-set (principal-search-property*) >
 
Each DAV:principal-search-property XML element contains exactly one searchable property, and a description of the property.
<!ELEMENT principal-search-property (prop, description) >
 
The DAV:prop element contains one principal property on which the server is able to perform a DAV:principal-property-search REPORT.
prop: see RFC 2518, Section 12.11
 
The description element is a human-readable description of what information this property represents. Servers MUST indicate the human language of the description using the xml:lang attribute and SHOULD consider the HTTP Accept-Language request header when selecting one of multiple available languages.
<!ELEMENT description #PCDATA >
In this example, the client determines the set of searchable principal properties by requesting the DAV:principal-search-property-set REPORT on the root of the server's principal URL collection set, identified by http://www.example.com/users/.
>> Request 
<<
REPORT /users/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: xxx
Accept-Language: en, de
Authorization: BASIC d2FubmFtYWs6cGFzc3dvcmQ=
Depth: 0
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:principal-search-property-set xmlns:D="DAV:"/>
 
>> Response 
<<
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Content-Length: xxx
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<D:principal-search-property-set xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:principal-search-property>
<D:prop>
<D:displayname/>
</D:prop>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Full name</D:description>
</D:principal-search-property>
<D:principal-search-property>
<D:prop xmlns:B="http://BigCorp.com/ns/">
<B:title/>
</D:prop>
<D:description xml:lang="en">Job title</D:description>
</D:principal-search-property>
</D:principal-search-property-set>
 
Implementations of this 
specification MUST support the XML element ignore rule, as specified in Section 
23.3.2 of [RFC2518], and the XML Namespace recommendation 
[REC-XML-NAMES].
Note that use of the DAV namespace 
is reserved for XML elements and property names defined in a standards-track or 
Experimental IETF 
RFC.
 
In this specification, the only human-readable content can be found in the description XML element, found within the DAV:supported-privilege-set property. This element contains a human-readable description of the capabilities controlled by a privilege. As a result, the description element must be capable of representing descriptions in multiple character sets. Since the description element is found within a WebDAV property, it is represented on the wire as XML [REC-XML], and hence can leverage XML's language tagging and character set encoding capabilities. Specifically, XML processors at minimum must be able to read XML elements encoded using the UTF-8 [UTF-8] encoding of the ISO 10646 multilingual plane. XML examples in this specification demonstrate use of the charset parameter of the Content-Type header, as defined in [RFC3023], as well as the XML "encoding" attribute, which together provide charset identification information for MIME and XML processors. Futhermore, this specification requires server implementations to tag description fields with the xml:lang attribute (see Section 2.12 of [REC-XML]), which specifies the human language of the description. Additionally, server implementations should take into account the value of the Accept-Language HTTP header to determine which description string to return.
For XML elements other than the description element, it is expected that implementations will treat the property names, privilege names, and values as tokens, and convert these tokens into human-readable text in the user's language and character set when displayed to a person. Only a generic WebDAV property display utility would display these values in their raw form to a human user.
For error reporting, we follow the convention of HTTP/1.1 status codes, including with each status code a short, English description of the code (e.g., 200 (OK)). While the possibility exists that a poorly crafted user agent would display this message to a user, internationalized applications will ignore this message, and display an appropriate message in the user's language and character set.
Further internationalization considerations for this protocol are described in the WebDAV Distributed Authoring protocol specification [RFC2518].
Applications and users of this access control protocol should be aware of several security considerations, detailed below. In addition to the discussion in this document, the security considerations detailed in the HTTP/1.1 specification [RFC2616], the WebDAV Distributed Authoring Protocol specification [RFC2518], and the XML Media Types specification [RFC3023] should be considered in a security analysis of this protocol.
In the absence of a mechanism for remotely manipulating access control lists, if a single user's authentication credentials are compromised, only those resources for which the user has access permission can be read, modified, moved, or deleted. With the introduction of this access control protocol, if a single compromised user has the ability to change ACLs for a broad range of other users (e.g., a super-user), the number of resources that could be altered by a single compromised user increases. This risk can be mitigated by limiting the number of people who have write-acl privileges across a broad range of resources.
The ability to read the access privileges (stored in the DAV:acl property), or the privileges permitted the currently authenticated user (stored in the DAV:current-user-privilege-set property) on a resource may seem innocuous, since reading an ACL cannot possibly affect the resource's state. However, if all resources have world-readable ACLs, it is possible to perform an exhaustive search for those resources that have inadvertently left themselves in a vulnerable state, such as being world-writeable. In particular, the property retrieval method PROPFIND, executed with Depth infinity on an entire hierarchy, is a very efficient way to retrieve the DAV:acl or DAV:current-user-privilege-set properties. Once found, this vulnerability can be exploited by a denial of service attack in which the open resource is repeatedly overwritten. Alternately, writeable resources can be modified in undesirable ways.
To reduce this risk, read-acl privileges should not be granted to unauthenticated principals, and restrictions on read-acl and read-current-user-privilege-set privileges for authenticated principals should be carefully analyzed when deploying this protocol. Access to the current-user-privilege-set property will involve a tradeoff of usability versus security. When the current-user-privilege-set is visible, user interfaces are expected to provide enhanced information concerning permitted and restricted operations, yet this information may also indicate a vulnerability that could be exploited. Deployment of this protocol will need to evaluate this tradeoff in light of the requirements of the deployment environment.
In an effort to reduce protocol complexity, this protocol specification intentionally does not address the issue of how to manage or discover the initial ACL that is placed upon a resource when it is created. The only way to discover the initial ACL is to create a new resource, then retrieve the value of the DAV:acl property. This assumes the principal creating the resource also has been granted the DAV:read-acl privilege.
As a result, it is possible that a principal could create a resource, and then discover that its ACL grants privileges that are undesirable. Furthermore, this protocol makes it possible (though unlikely) that the creating principal could be unable to modify the ACL, or even delete the resource. Even when the ACL can be modified, there will be a short period of time when the resource exists with the initial ACL before its new ACL can be set.
Several factors mitigate this risk. Human 
principals are often aware of the default access permissions in their editing 
environments and take this into account when writing information. Furthermore, 
default privilege policies are usually very conservative, limiting the 
privileges granted by the initial ACL. 
Authentication mechanisms defined for use with HTTP and WebDAV also apply to this WebDAV Access Control Protocol, in particular the Basic and Digest authentication mechanisms defined in [RFC2617]. Implementation of the ACL spec requires that Basic authentication, if used, MUST only be supported over secure transport such as TLS.
This document uses the namespace defined by [RFC2518] for XML elements. That is, this specification uses the "DAV:" URI namespace, previously registered in the URI schemes registry. All other IANA considerations mentioned in [RFC2518] are also applicable to this specification.
The following notice is copied from RFC 2026, section 10.4, and describes the position of the IETF concerning intellectual property claims made against this document.
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use other technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. Information on the IETF's procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and standards-related documentation can be found in BCP-11. Copies of claims of rights made available for publication and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF Secretariat.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights that may cover technology that may be required to practice this standard. Please address the information to the IETF Executive Director.
This protocol is the collaborative product of the WebDAV ACL design team: Bernard Chester, Geoff Clemm, Anne Hopkins, Barry Lind, Sean Lyndersay, Eric Sedlar, Greg Stein, and Jim Whitehead. The authors are grateful for the detailed review and comments provided by Jim Amsden, Dylan Barrell, Gino Basso, Murthy Chintalapati, Lisa Dusseault, Stefan Eissing, Tim Ellison, Yaron Goland, Dennis Hamilton, Laurie Harper, Eckehard Hermann, Ron Jacobs, Chris Knight, Remy Maucherat, Larry Masinter, Joe Orton, Peter Raymond, Julian Reschke, and Keith Wannamaker. We thank Keith Wannamaker for the initial text of the principal property search sections. Prior work on WebDAV access control protocols has been performed by Yaron Goland, Paul Leach, Lisa Dusseault, Howard Palmer, and Jon Radoff. We would like to acknowledge the foundation laid for us by the authors of the DeltaV, WebDAV and HTTP protocols upon which this protocol is layered, and the invaluable feedback from the WebDAV working group.
[RFC2119] S.Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels." RFC 2119, BCP 14, March, 1997.
[REC-XML] T. Bray, J. Paoli, C.M. Sperberg-McQueen, "Extensible Markup Language (XML)." World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-xml.http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml
[REC-XML-NAMES] T. Bray, D. Hollander, A. Layman, "Name Spaces in XML" World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-xml-names. http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/
[RFC3253] G. Clemm, J. Amsden, T. Ellison, C. Kaler, J. Whitehead, "Versioning Extensions to WebDAV." RFC 3253, March 2002.
[REC-XML-INFOSET] J. Cowan, R. Tobin, "XML Information Set." World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-xml-infoset. http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-infoset/
[RFC2616] R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. C. Mogul, H. Frystyk, L. Masinter, P. Leach, and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1." RFC 2616, June, 1999.
[RFC2617] J. Franks, P. Hallam-Baker, J. Hostetler, S. Lawrence, P. Leach, A. Luotonen, L. Stewart, "HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication." RFC 2617, June, 1999.
[RFC2518] Y. Goland, E. Whitehead, A. Faizi, S. R. Carter, D. Jensen, "HTTP Extensions for Distributed Authoring -- WEBDAV." RFC 2518, February, 1999.
[RFC2368] P. Hoffman, L. Masinter, J. Zawinski, "The mailto URL scheme." RFC 2368, July, 1998.
[RFC3023] M. Murata, S. St.Laurent, D. Kohn, "XML Media Types." RFC 3023, January, 2001.
[RFC3010] S. Shepler, B. Callaghan, D. Robinson, R. Thurlow, C. Beame, M. Eisler, D.Noveck "NFS version 4 Protocol." RFC 3010, December 2000.
[UTF-8] F. Yergeau, "UTF-8, a transformation format of Unicode and ISO 10646." RFC 2279, January, 1998.
[RFC2026] S.Bradner, "The Internet Standards Process - Revision 3." RFC 2026, BCP 9. Harvard, October, 1996.
[RFC2255] T. Howes, M. Smith, "The LDAP URL Format." RFC 2255. Netscape, December, 1997.
[RFC2251] M. Wahl, T. Howes, S. Kille, "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (v3)." RFC 2251. Critical Angle, Netscape, Isode, December, 1997.
[CaseMap] M. Davis, "Case Mappings", Unicode Standard Annex #21, March 26, 2001. http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr21
Geoffrey 
Clemm
IBM
20 
Maguire Road
Lexington, MA 
02421
Email: 
geoffrey.clemm@us.ibm.com
 
Anne 
Hopkins
Microsoft 
Corporation
One 
Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 
98052
Email: 
annehop@microsoft.com
 
Eric Sedlar
Oracle Corporation
500 Oracle Parkway
Redwood Shores, CA 94065
Email: 
eric.sedlar@oracle.com
 
Jim 
Whitehead
U.C. Santa 
Cruz
Dept. of Computer Science
Baskin Engineering
1156 High 
Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Email: ejw@cse.ucsc.edu
 
All XML elements defined in this Document Type Definition (DTD) belong to the DAV namespace. This DTD should be viewed as an addendum to the DTD provided in [RFC2518], section 23.1.
<!-- Privileges -->
 
<!ELEMENT read EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT write EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT write-properties EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT write-content 
EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT unlock 
EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT read-acl EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT read-current-user-privilege-set EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT write-acl EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT all EMPTY>
 
 
<!-- Principal Properties (Section 4) -->
 
<!ELEMENT principal EMPTY>
 
<!ELEMENT alternate-URI-set (href*)>
<!ELEMENT principal-URL (href)>
<!ELEMENT group-member-set (href*)>
<!ELEMENT group-membership (href*)>
 
<!-- Access Control Properties (Section 5) -->
 
<!-- DAV:owner Property (Section 5.1) -->
 
<!ELEMENT owner (href prop?)>
<!ELEMENT prop (see [RFC2518], section 12.11)>
 
 
<!-- DAV:supported-privilege-set Property (Section 5.2) -->
 
<!ELEMENT supported-privilege-set (supported-privilege*)>
<!ELEMENT supported-privilege
(privilege, abstract?, description, supported-privilege*)>
 
<!ELEMENT privilege ANY>
<!ELEMENT abstract EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT description #PCDATA> 
<!ELEMENT privilege ANY>
 
 
<!-- 
DAV:current-user-privilege-set Property (Section 5.3) -->
 
<!ELEMENT current-user-privilege-set (privilege*)>
 
 
<!-- DAV:acl Property (Section 5.4) -->
 
<!ELEMENT acl (ace)* >
<!ELEMENT ace (invert | principal, (grant|deny), protected?, inherited?)>
<!ELEMENT invert principal>
 
<!ELEMENT principal ((href, prop?)
| all | authenticated | unauthenticated
| property | self)>
 
<!ELEMENT prop (see [RFC2518], section 12.11)>
<!ELEMENT all EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT authenticated EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT unauthenticated EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT property ANY>
<!ELEMENT self EMPTY>
 
<!ELEMENT grant (privilege+)>
<!ELEMENT deny (privilege+)>
<!ELEMENT privilege ANY>
 
<!ELEMENT protected EMPTY>
 
<!ELEMENT inherited (href)>
 
 
<!-- DAV:inherited-acl-set Property (Section 5.6) -->
 
<!ELEMENT inherited-acl-set (href*)>
 
 
<!-- DAV:principal-collection-set Property (Section 5.6) -->
 
<!ELEMENT principal-collection-set (href*)>
 
 
<!-- DAV:acl-semantics Property (Section 6) -->
 
<!ELEMENT acl-semantics (ace-combination?, ace-ordering?, allowed-ace?, required-principal?)>
 
<!ELEMENT ace-combination
(first-match | all-grant-before-any-deny | specific-deny-overrides-grant)>
<!ELEMENT first-match EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT all-grant-before-any-deny EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT specific-deny-overrides-grant EMPTY>
 
<!ELEMENT ace-ordering (deny-before-grant)? >
<!ELEMENT deny-before-grant EMPTY>
 
<!ELEMENT allowed-ace (grant-only |
no-invert)*>
<!ELEMENT grant-only EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT no-invert EMPTY>
 
 
<!ELEMENT required-principal
(all? | authenticated? | unauthenticated? | self? | href* |property*)>
 
 
<!-- ACL method preconditions (Section 8.1.1) -->
 
<!ELEMENT no-ace-conflict 
EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT 
no-protected-ace-conflict EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT 
no-inherited-ace-conflict EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT limited-number-of-aces 
EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT no-abstract 
EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT 
not-supported-privilege EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT 
missing-required-principal EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT recognized-principal 
EMPTY>
<!ELEMENT allowed-principal 
EMPTY>
 
 
<!-- REPORTs (Section 9) -->
 
<!ELEMENT acl-principal-prop-set ANY>
ANY value: a sequence of one or more elements, with at most one DAV:prop element.
 
<!ELEMENT principal-match ((principal-property | self), prop?)>
<!ELEMENT principal-property ANY>
ANY value: an element whose value identifies a property. The expectation is the value of the named property typically contains an href element that contains the URI of a principal
<!ELEMENT self EMPTY>
 
<!ELEMENT principal-property-search ((property-search+), prop?) >
<!ELEMENT property-search (prop, match) >
<!ELEMENT match #PCDATA >
 
<!ELEMENT principal-search-property-set (principal-search-property*) >
<!ELEMENT principal-search-property (prop, description) >
The following table of WebDAV methods (as defined in RFC 2518, 2616, and 3253) clarifies which privileges are required for access for each method. Note that the privileges listed, if denied, MUST cause access to be denied. However, given that a specific implementation MAY define an additional custom privilege to control access to existing methods, having all of the indicated privileges does not mean that access will be granted. Note that lack of the indicated privileges does not imply that access will be denied, since a particular implementation may use a sub-privilege aggregated under the indicated privilege to control access. Privileges required refer to the current resource being processed unless otherwise specified.
 
METHOD                                 
PRIVILEGES 
 GET                                 
<D:read> 
 HEAD 
                                
<D:read> 
 OPTIONS 
                                
<D:read> 
 PUT 
(target exists)                                
<D:write-content> on target resource
 PUT (no target exists)                                
<D:bind> on parent collection of target
 PROPPATCH                                 
<D:write-properties> 
 ACL                                 
<D:write-acl> 
 PROPFIND                                 
<D:read> (plus <D:read-acl> and 
                                 
<D:read-current-user-privilege-set> as needed) 
 COPY (target exists)                                
<D:read>, <D:write-content> and <D:write-properties> on 
target resource 
 COPY (no target 
exists)                                
<D:read>, <D:bind> on target collection 
 MOVE (no target exists)                                
<D:unbind> on source collection and <D:bind> on target 
collection
 MOVE (target 
exists)                                
As above, plus <D:unbind> on the target collection
 DELETE                                 
<D:unbind> on parent collection 
 LOCK (target exists)                                
<D:write-content> 
 LOCK (no target exists)                                
<D:bind> on parent collection
 MKCOL                                 
<D:bind> on parent collection 
 UNLOCK                                 
<D:unlock> 
 CHECKOUT                                 
<D:write-properties > 
 CHECKIN                                 
<D:write-properties > 
 REPORT                                 
<D:read> (on all referenced resources) 
 VERSION-CONTROL                                 
<D:write-properties> 
 MERGE                                 
<D:write-content> 
 MKWORKSPACE                                 
<D:write-content> on parent collection 
 BASELINE-CONTROL                                 
<D:write-properties> and <D:write-content>
 MKACTIVITY                                 
<D:write-content> on parent collection