<oXygen/> supports editing remote files, using the FTP, SFTP and WebDAV protocols. The remote opened files can be edited exactly as the local ones. They can be added to the project, and can be subject to XSL and FO transformations.
![[Note]](img/note.gif) | Note |
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The FTP part is using passive access to the FTP servers. Make sure the server you are trying to connect to is supporting passive connections. Also the UTF-8 encoding is supported and can be configured for communication with the FTP server if the server supports it. Files can be opened through the Secure FTP (SFTP) protocol using the regular user/password mechanism or using a private key file and a passphrase. The user/password mechanism has precedence so for using the private key and passphrase you have to remove the password from the dialog used to browse the server repository and leave only the user name. The private key file and the passphrase must be set in the SFTP user preferences. The WebDAV access is implemented using the Slide package of the Apache Software Foundation. The HTTP/WebDAV capabilities have been extensively tested with various servers running on Windows (IIS), Mac OS X and Linux (Apache). |
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If you have set a proxy server to be used by <oXygen/>, make sure it supports the WebDAV protocol. If it does not, make sure your connections do not pass through this server, otherwise you will not be able to connect to a WebDAV server. If the server requires NTLM authentication <oXygen/> will display an authentication dialog where the user and password for passing through the NTLM server must be entered. If the user is from a domain you can specify the user as DOMAIN\user. |
To open the remote files, choose from the main menu → The displayed dialog is composed of several parts:
The editable combo box, in which it can be specified directly the URL to be opened or saved.
![[Tip]](img/tip.gif)
URLs that can be directly opened You can type in here an URL like http://some.site/test.xml, in case the file is accessible through normal HTTP protocol, or ftp://anonymous@some.site/home/test.xml if the file is accessible through anonymous FTP.
This combo box is also displaying the current selection when the user changes selection by browsing the tree of folders and files on the server.
The Identification section contains the access credentials. If you want to browse for a file on a server, you have to specify the user and password. This information is bound to the selected URL displayed in the "File URL" combo box, and used further in opening/saving the file. If the check box "Save" is selected, then the user and password are saved between editing sessions. The password is kept encrypted into the options file.
Note Your password is well protected. In the case the options file is used on other machine by a user with a different username the password will become unreadable, since the encryption is username dependent. This is also true if you add URLs having user and password to your project.
The Browse for remote file section contains the server combo and the "Autoconnect" check box. Into the server combo it may be specified the protocol (HTTP, HTTPS or FTP), the name or IP of the server and, in case of WebDAV, the path to the WebDAV directory.
Server URLs When accessing a FTP server, you need to specify only the protocol and the host, like: ftp://server.com, ftp://ftp.apache.org, or if using a nonstandard port: ftp://server.com:7800/ etc.
When accessing a WebDAV server, along with the protocol and the host, it must be specified also the directory of the WebDAV repository.
![[Important]](img/important.gif)
Important Make sure that the repository directory ends in a slash "/".
Ex: https://www.some-webdav-server.com:443/webdav-repository/, http://devel:9090/webdav/
By pressing the "Browse" button the directory listing will be shown in the component below. When "Autoconnect" is selected then at every time the dialog is shown, the browse action will be performed.
The tree view of the documents stored on the server. You can browse the directories, and make multiple selections. Additionally, you may use the "Rename", "Delete", and "New Folder" to manage the file repository.
The file names are sorted in a case-insensitive way.
A WebDAV resource can be locked when it is opened in <oXygen/> by checking the option Lock WebDAV files on open to protect it from concurrent modifications on the server by other users. If other user tries to edit the same resource he will receive an error message and the name of the lock owner. The lock is released automatically when the editor for that resource is closed in <oXygen/>.
GZIP compression is handled correctly for the content received/sent from/to a HTTP server or a WebDAV server. The built-in client of <oXygen/> notifies the server when the connection is established that GZIP compression is supported.
Some FTP servers allow the modification of file permissions on the file system for the files that they serve over the FTP protocol. This feature of the protocol is accessible directly in the FTP/WebDAV file browser dialog by right-clicking on a tree node and selecting the Change permissions menu item which brings up the following dialog:
The usual Unix file permissions Read, Write and Execute are granted or denied in this dialog for the owner of the file, the group of the owner and the rest of the users. The aggregate number of the current state of the permissions is updated in the Permissions text field when a permission is modified with one of the check boxes.