You need to connect to a WebDAV resource and list the contents of a collection. As with most WebDAV resources, you need to supply authentication information.

Create an instance of WebdavResource, passing in a URL and a UsernamePasswordCredential object. List the contents of a WebDAV collection by calling the listWebdavResources() method. The following example demonstrates the use of WebdavResource to list the contents of a WebDAV collection:

               import org.apache.commons.httpclient.Credentials;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpClient;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpException;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.UsernamePasswordCredentials;
import org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils;
import org.apache.commons.lang.time.FastDateFormat;
import org.apache.webdav.lib.WebdavResource;

HttpClient client = new HttpClient( );

String url = "http://www.discursive.com/jccook/dav/";
Credentials credentials =
    new UsernamePasswordCredentials("davuser", "davpass");

// List resources in top directory
WebdavResource resource = new WebdavResource(url, credentials);
WebdavResource[] resources = resource.listWebdavResources( );
System.out.println( "type  name           size    type" +
                    "                   modified");
System.out.println( "-----------------------------------------" +
                    "---------------------------");
for( int i = 0; i < resources.length; i++ )    {
    WebdavResource item = resources[i];
    String type;
    if( item.isCollection( ) ) {
        type = "dir";
    } else {
        type = "file";
    }
    System.out.print( StringUtils.rightPad( type, 6 ) );
    System.out.print( StringUtils.rightPad( item.getName( ), 15 ) );
    System.out.print( StringUtils.rightPad( item.getGetContentLength( ) 
    + "", 8 ) );
    System.out.print( StringUtils.rightPad( item.getGetContentType( ), 
    23 ) );
    Date lastMod = new Date( item.getGetLastModified( ) );
    System.out.print( 
        StringUtils.rightPad( 
            FastDateFormat.getInstance( ).format( lastMod ), 25 ));
    System.out.print( "
" );
}

The program connects to a WebDAV resource using the credentials supplied to the constructor of WebdavResource. It lists the contents of a collection and produces the following output:

type  name           size    type                   modified
---------------------------------------------------------------------
file  test.html      14      text/html              5/6/04 12:16 AM          
file  index.html     14      text/html              5/5/04 11:59 PM          
dir   test           0       httpd/unix-directory   5/6/04 12:01 AM

Jakarta Slide is built on top of Jakarta HttpClient, but you will notice that this recipe did not involve the execution of an HttpMethod. This is because WebdavResource manages the complexity of working with an instance of HttpClient behind the scenes. The only trace of HttpClient is the UsernamePasswordCredentials object that is passed to the constructor of WebdavResource. Because Jakarta Slide is built on top of Jakarta HttpClient, almost any feature of Jakarta HttpClient translates directly to Jakarta Slide. If you need to access a WebDAV repository over SSL with a self-signed certificate, or if you need to alter the cookie policy, you can use the same facilities that are available to you when you are using HttpClient directly.