Can straight webdav via browser match Nextcloud's upload stability?

[Ange.Reid]

I could need experiences or advice, if anyone has tried the following.

I’ve been running Nextcloud for several years, as a snap module on Ubuntu Server 22.04. One of the main reasons for using Nextcloud is that I work with media and therefore use it as collaboration server which is very good at uploading and downloading many large(!) binary media files. For example, large high-resolution video files of several gigabytes, 32-bit 96kHz audio files, and similar. Nextcloud is incredibly good at handling uploads to the server; it once managed to upload a 70GB file. Uploads almost never fail.

However, the built-in “zip multiple files together files for download” feature is so frustrating that I’ve been considering using WebDAV on Apache instead. To make that work via a web browser, I’ll likely build my own HTML interface for the WebDAV service. A minimalist file manager, nothing advanced.

BUT… what I’m wondering about, before I start investing time into building it, is whether uploading large files (like 0.5-5GB) to WebDAV via HTTPS will match the upload stability of large files to Nextcloud?

My construction, if built, will probably end up being HTML forms/JavaScript and XMLHttpRequest or the Fetch API. I have the impression that one of the reasons Nextcloud handles large uploads so well is that it likely uses Resumable/chunked uploads, which Apache’s WebDAV module might not be able to handle.

Has anyone had experience with this and can shed more light on it? Or educated guesses and tips are also welcome. It’s hard to find information about this kind of thing.

Thank you in advance

[bb77]

So essentially, you want someone here to give you tips on how to build your own WebDAV server because you don’t like the fact that Nextcloud puts multiple files into a ZIP when downloading them at once?

I see two problems with that:

1. This is the Nextcloud support forum, not Stack Overflow In other words, I fail to understand what developing a replacement solution for Nextcloud based on Apache’s WebDAV module has to do with Nextcloud.

2. I’m not sure how easy it would be to achieve what you want, or if it’s even possible, since every file-sharing service I know works this way. Even major providers like Google Drive create a ZIP file when you download multiple files at once. As a non-developer, this leads me to conclude that there are probably no easy ways to download multiple files at once via a browser (if there are any at all), other than packing them into an archive so that they can be downloaded as a single file.

[Ange.Reid]

Thanks for response.

Yes, I know this is a bit bold to bring up here. I just didn’t know many other places to turn to for knowledge.

I’m into collaborations with huge binary media files, dealing with “computer-dummies” who complains that selecting folder A, B and C for download (total content size 12gb) won’t download for them. They wait, for an hour or more, only to be met by a Nextcloud error message. Server has tried to zip 12gb of material, and some buffers or resources ran out on the server. It appears impossible to disable, and the question I get is “If this doesn’t work, why do you have it there?”. So, I’m going the simpler route, having people download one file at a time (or for more tech-savvy users I tell them to use webdav).

I just thought I could collect some form of experience how safe and stable a simpler upload solution could be compared to Nextcloud’s very safe and stable ability.