WebDAV “MyDrive” idea

Something that is “hot right now” is off-site drives over the internet. An example of a company that are coming on-line with this is Jungle Disk .

Since I now have a working webdav server with an sql backend, I was thinking of using it to create a project to provide a similar service. Obviously I won’t be hosting this anywhere as I don’t have the money to set-up a massive data-centre, but it would be good to see what I could come up with and share the project source with the world. I am going to name this project “MyWebDrive” the basic idea is this.

A user comes to the MyWebDrive website and creates an account , this creates this user an “area”. The user is sent an e-mail with the instructions for how to connect to their “area” via WebDav. Once they have their webdav drive connected they can then copy files create folders etc in their “area”.

This provides the “off-site drive” part.

Also via the web site the user can mange the access to each folder in their “Area”. They can do this by creating their own “friends” in their area, and then setting the access level these “friends” have to each folder. “Friends” can then be sent an e-mail inviting them to connect via webdav to the “area” so they can share the “WebDrive”

This provided the “sharing” part.

At this stage I am not going to be creating my own client for this I will be relying on windows explorer and the Mac OS to provide connectivity. Windows explorer doesn’t support https for WebDAV so this won’t exactly be a secure application, but as a first try that is fine.

I think I will put together two version. One for internal use (“friends” can only be added from Active Directory) , and one for external user ( “friends” can be created in the system). The second version will allow me to have a bit of a play with .Net membership providers which I haven’t worked with before.

The .net components I need to do for the system are:

• SQL Backended Webdav Server ( already have this, but I want to create a cut down version and the sourceforge framework is a little too bloated for my liking )
• SQL based Access control , I already have this from my previous examples
• SQL based membership provider. This is new.
• The website itself to allow people to create accounts, manage their “areas” , send e-mail etc.