How to Search a WebDAV Directory with XML (293885)

SUMMARY

Searching a Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) directory with XML requires the following:

The directory in which the content is located must be on a drive formatted for NTFS. If you put the directory on a drive formatted for the file allocation table (FAT) file system, clients can search for resource content, but they cannot search for resource properties.
Indexing Service must be running.
In the Internet Information Services (IIS) snap-in, the Virtual Directory properties for your WebDAV directory must have the Index this resource and Read access options selected.

By using the Microsoft implementation of WebDAV, you can create a tool for clients to search a directory for content, properties, or both. The following example (of a raw request) demonstrates a basic search command from which you can create a tool:

SEARCH / HTTP/1.1
Host: iis
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: 157

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<g:searchrequest xmlns:g="DAV:">
<g:sql>
Select "DAV:displayname" FROM SCOPE()
</g:sql>
</g:searchrequest>

For details on how to create a search tool, see the Microsoft Platform SDK.

MORE INFORMATION

The example in this article is a very basic sample. Using the WebDAV search verb in conjunction with Indexing Service is unsupported and may return unexpected results.

If you want to take advantage of all of the indexing and searching capabilities of the Windows 2000 Indexing Service, Microsoft recommends that you access the Indexing Service and its APIs with Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP).

If you have questions about how to search Exchange DAV folders with XML, contact Microsoft Exchange Server Support.