Nextcloud WebDAV URL

dstillman Zotero Team
This discussion was created from comments split from: Sync files over private server.
  • andersculturalstudies
    I have a similar issue. I want to activate Nextcloud webdav protocol for Zotero but I am unsure how to format the webdav url.I tried this url https://example.com/nextcloud/remote.php/dav/files/USERNAME (of course I replaced the details)
    With this version I get the error something like “davs failed to load” from Zotero. I use the Linux desktop client in Debian Buster. I am pretty sure that webdav is activated on the server side since I use the Nextcloud desktop client for webdav file sync. I also posted this issue in the Nextcloud forum: https://help.nextcloud.com/t/zotero-webdav-integration/78048 Sorry for crossposting.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    (Please start new threads for new issues. I've moved this to a new thread.)
  • andersculturalstudies
    Ok, thanks @dstillman , sorry.
  • bwiernik
    This isn’t a Zotero-specific question, so to get the best help at Nextcloud, I would edit your question title to remove mentioning Zotero. Your question comes down to how to properly specify the WebDAV URL (before the “/Zotero” part) for Nextcloud and how to check is WebDAV is configured correctly on your Nextcloud server. You’ll have to ask at Nextcloud about those, unfortunately.
  • andersculturalstudies
    Ok, thank you.
  • andersculturalstudies
    I found the correct webdav address in Nextcloud by the gearwheel in the "files" app which is the startpage in the lower leftcorner.
  • Mojo Dodo
    I found the correct webdav address in Nextcloud by the gearwheel in the "files" app which is the startpage in the lower leftcorner.
    Thank you @andersculturalstudies! I was having the same question and stumbled over your answer.

    I now successfully use my Nextcloud storage to backup and synchronise the PDF attachments of my Zotero references via WebDAV.

    See also the Nextcloud user manual:
    In the following examples, you should replace example.com/nextcloud with the URL of your Nextcloud server (omit the directory part if the installation is in the root of your domain), and “USERNAME” with the username of the connecting user.

    See the webdav url (bottom left, settings) on your Nextcloud.
    https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/16/user_manual/files/access_webdav.html
  • andersculturalstudies
    Great! I am happy there are more Zotero-users who appreciate Foss cloud-services and security. This seemed pretty simple but was not so simple after all. Sometimes it is important to ask those simple questions. Also the Webdav integration does not require much space on the server side since the items are zipped.
  • natema
    This is a wonderful feature and I regret not having discovered it before :)
    so far I was using my Nextcloud server to sync directly Zotero's storage folder.
  • andersculturalstudies
    @natema was your library not currupted by that? I just decided to move out of the Zotero sync because I don´t like Amazon hosting. So for now I save everything locally. Most of all I would like to have a sync option that synced my Remarkable tablet with Nextcloud and Zotero client, but without the Zotero cloud solution. I am hoping that someone will come up with a nice solution.
  • bwiernik
    If you’re technically savvy, you can set up and run your own Zotero sync server https://github.com/zotero/dataserver

    You could also use the Zotfile plugin with linked attachments to move files to a cloud folder.

    But you cannot safely store the Zotero database itself in a cloud folder.
  • natema
    @andersculturalstudies luckily I didn't encounter any problem, the only annoying thing was that every little change would cause the Nextcloud client to check a lot of files and subfolders in the Zotero database. Now that I'm using directly WebDAV the syncing process is much cleaner.
  • daoyang
    @"Mojo Dodo" I did the same as you, in the hope of backing up my Zotero PDF attachments to my Nextcloud via WebDAV. However, while Zotero tells me it's all activated and working fine, I'm not seeing any backups being sent to my /Zotero directory in my Nextcloud files... Is there anything else I should do to activate this syncing?
  • andersculturalstudies
    edited September 9, 2021
    @daoyang Zotero is zipping the directory in Nextcloud so all you will have is a folder called zotero. But you will not be able to see your files as far as I understand it. Instead you packe them up in and view them in the zotero client.
  • mlohr
    I also wrote an blog post about this issue and explained how this can even be done using shared folders - which allows to use different "credentials" than the actual account username/password: https://mlohr.com/sync-zotero-library-to-nextcloud/
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