Why zotero credentials are required even for private webdav storage?

Nizamov.Shawkat

I am trying to make zotero work with my own webdav server.

The problem after all is that zotero requires to have correct zotero credentials, even if I selected syncing files to my own webdav storage. I played with all posible variations of options - but nothing worked till I supplied correct zotero login/password. After that, looking into the webdav folder, I actually see several files - lastsync, *.prop, *.zip.

I do not uderstand - is it a bug or a feature?
Is it possible to sync to private webdav storage without connecting to zotero servers?

dstillman

Only files sync to WebDAV. Metadata still syncs to the Zotero server.

Nizamov.Shawkat

Thanks for the quick response !

I have also found similar thread with more information about situation here:

http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/9485/sync-group-attachments-rather-to-webdav-than-to-zotero/

ajlyon

To put this a little differently, the file storage (WebDAV or Zotero File Storage) is dumb. It doesn't know which copies of Zotero have which files. It doesn't know anything about the metadata.

If you for some reason need to use your own server for metadata as well, the source code for the data server is available. See https://www.zotero.org/trac/browser/dataserver/trunk and http://www.zitation.org/docs/ for more information, but note that this option is only for the very technically inclined, as there is currently almost no user documentation, and you'd have to patch Zotero to make it work.

dstillman

(Actually Zotero File Storage isn't dumb—it supports things like advanced permissions, which is why group file syncing is possible. It can also, for example, automatically skip uploads if a file already exists on the server, which can speed syncing time significantly.)

ajlyon

(Apologies to ZFS and its hard-working developers. I meant dumb in the nicest possible way, mainly to say that it doesn't know or care too much about the Zotero item metadata, which Shawkat is probably loath to lose.)

dstillman

(No, I know what you meant. Mine was a technical distinction as well—I just wanted to clarify that ZFS, as a tightly integrated part of the Zotero data server, does, in fact, know details about Zotero items, which is how it can do things that WebDAV can't.)