The tutorial will tell you the steps to set up a WebDAV server on macOS using the built-in Apache HTTP server.

About WebDAV

WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is an extension of HTTP that facilitates collaborative editing and management of files on remote web servers. It allows users to create, change, and move documents on a server, making it suitable for distributed teams and file sharing.Setting Up Apache HTTP Server for WebDAV

Steps to set your WebDAV server

1 Enable WebDAV in Apache

Open the Apache configuration file. It's usually located at /etc/apache2/httpd.conf. You can use a text editor with administrative privileges.

Look for the following lines related to WebDAV modules. Uncomment the lines for LoadModule dav_module libexec/apache2/mod_dav.so and LoadModule dav_fs_module libexec/apache2/mod_dav_fs.so by removing the # at the beginning if they are commented.

2 Configure WebDAV in Apache

Use the htpasswd command to create a password file. For example, if you want to create a user named user1, run the command sudo htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/passwd.dav user1 in the terminal. You will be prompted to enter a password for the user. If you want to add more users later, just run sudo htpasswd /etc/apache2/passwd.dav another_user without the -c option.

The configuration can be like this:

DAV On
AuthType Basic
AuthName "WebDAV"
AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/passwd.dav
Require valid - user

This creates a WebDAV location /webdav and sets basic authentication. The AuthUserFile points to the password file that you will create later.

3 Create a Password File

Use the htpasswd command to create a password file. For example, if you want to create a user named user1, run the command sudo htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/passwd.dav user1 in the terminal. You will be prompted to enter a password for the user. If you want to add more users later, just run sudo htpasswd /etc/apache2/passwd.dav another_user without the -c option.

4 Restart Apache

After configuring and creating the password file, restart the Apache server. You can do this by running the command sudo apachectl restart in the terminal. Now your WebDAV server on Mac with the default Apache should be up and running, and clients can connect to it using the configured credentials.