The URL chooser dialog box may be used to specify the location of a file or directory on the local file system or on a remote FTP or WebDAV server. This file or directory may be an existing one or a file or directory to be created; it depends on the command displaying this dialog box.
An URL (Uniform Resource Locator), often called Internet Address in Web browsers, has two parts:
The server part, which is specified in the upper side of the dialog box.
The file path part, which is specified in the File path text field, located in the lower side of the dialog box.
Procedure for specifying an URL:
Choose between the local file system (click on File toggle) and remote FTP or WebDAV servers (click on FTP or HTTP/HTTPS toggles).
A WebDAV server is an HTTP server supporting WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning, see http://www.webdav.org/) extensions.
A HTTPS server is an HTTP server using a Secure Socket Layer (SSL). A secure socket layer is a protocol designed to transfer encrypted data between computers over the Web.
When such protocol is used, the server sends a certificate to the client in order to identify itself. This certificate contains the fully qualified name of the server, example: fs23.acme.com
. Make sure to also specify this fully qualified name in the Server: field (that is, specify fs23.acme.com
, not simply fs23
) or you'll get an open error.
HTTPS servers also allow the client to send a certificate as a mean to authenticate himself. That is, HTTPS servers support an elegant alternative to the login+password authentication. Unfortunately, this technology is currently not supported by XXE. Your administrator needs to setup the HTTPS server to authenticate users using the standard BASIC or DIGEST algorithms.
For a file located on a FTP server, you'll need to choose between an anonymous session (click on the Anonymous toggle) and a session using a named account (click on the User toggle and specify user name and password in the corresponding text fields).
For a file located on a WebDAV server, you'll have to specify your user name and password after the connection to the server has been established. In order to do that, a specialized dialog box will be displayed at that time.
Specify the file path in the File path text field. The easiest way to do that is to click on the button in order to be able to use a specialized file chooser. Which file chooser is displayed depends on what you specified in upper side of the dialog box.
A file path always use '/'
as a separator for its components. For example, on Windows, C:\WINNT\Profile
has to be specified as /C:/WINNT/Profile
. But you don't have to worry about this if you use the specialized file chooser displayed when you click on the button.
When choosing a file located on a WebDAV server, you'll have to specify by hand the WebDAV enabled initial directory (unless the root directory, '/'
, is WebDAV-enabled on your HTTP server).
On most HTTP server, trying to browse files starting from '/'
will fail with error "'/' is not DAV-enabled
". In such case, you'll have to enter a path such as "/dav/mydocs/
" first, then click on the button to select a file or directory below this WebDAV-enabled prefix.
When browsing files on a WebDAV server, icon shows which files are locked and icon
shows which directories are locked. Moving your mouse over these icons will display a tool tip listing the authors locking the corresponding file or directory.