Webdav doesn't lock the file during editing. what is the solution?

[parisa]

Hi every one,

I’m working in Alfresco Community 201612, 2017 and 4.2f and also Alfresco One. I’m testing webdav protocol in these versions in Linux and Windows 7.

Our tests verify that Webdav doesn’t lock the documents when a user is working on it, so considering the following case that at least two persons working at the same time in the same document, can cause a serious problem:

User1 is working on a document throught Webdab and editing it. At the same time, user2 changes the same file and saves it. Now consider user1 saves his changes. What would be happen? Since user1 was working on his version, he even didn’t understand that anybody updated a document! And he saves his own version and we lost all the modifications done by user2.

Have you recognized this problem and have you found any technical solution for that?

I appreciate your help.

Thanks in advance.

Parisa

[afaust]

Unfortunately there is no technical solution on the Alfresco side of things. I completely depends on the client applications (and operating system) working via WebDAV to lock/unlock files when necessary. So if a client application does not recognize that it is working via WebDAV and/or does not issue any file locking command to the underlying file system of the operating system, then the file will not be locked in Alfresco. There is no way around this issue other than switching to a different application that properly locks files, or locking the file manually.

[parisa]

Thanks a lot for your reply. It really helps me so much.

Regarding to your description, I found that it is possible to issue a file locking command to lock the file during editing. Would you please describe it more or link me to a reference to understand how this option is working.

You described about locking the files manually, may I ask you to give me more information about it. Is it different with issuing lock command you already described?

Thanks in advance,

Parisa

[afaust · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, by default, there are no UI actions for simply locking documents in the Share UI (there are actions for unlocking though). You'd have to add these as customisations. The LockService is the one that is responsible for this from a Java API point-of-view.

[parisa]

Thank you so much. Now, it is completely clear for me.

Now, I’m working in Linux with Alfresco Community, but as I found, lock exists for Alfresco One in Windows with __CheckInOut.exe, based on the following link:

http://docs.alfresco.com/5.1/concepts/cifs-outside-interface-intro.html

This is just for windows, how about Linux?

Thank you in advance for your help.

[afaust]

There is no such support for any other OS. CIFS / SMB is targeted primarily for Windows users.

[parisa]

Thanks a lot.

You helped me so much.