What is DavWWWRoot?

Question

I am connecting to my WebDAV server in Windows Explorer as \\myserver@8080\DavWWWRoot\. I can not find any folder called DavWWWRoot on my server in my storage or in the WebDAV server back-end code. Where does this DavWWWRoot come from?

Answer 1

Taken from http://www.webdavsystem.com/server/access/windows

"DavWWWRoot is a special keyword recognized by Windows Shell. There is no such folder exists on your WebDAV server and you should not create it. You also will not find any DavWWWRoot name in requests to your server. The DavWWWRoot keyword tells Mini-Redirector driver, that handles WebDAV requests, that you are connecting to the root of WebDAV server.

You can avoid using this keyword if you specify folder that exists on your server when connecting to server. For example: \\webdavserver.com\sales\

in this case DavWWWRoot will not appear in urls."

Answer 2

According to "Understanding and Troubleshooting SharePoint Explorer View": "DavWWWRoot is a special keyword that alerts the WebDAV client that you are referring to the root of a WebDAV server". It is used by the Mini-redirector instead of the folder name, to indicate server root.

If your WebDAV location is at http://host:8080/cms/dav/, Windows Shell (mini-redirector) can connect to \\host@8080\DavWWWRoot\cms\dav\ or to \\host@8080\cms\dav\. There is no folder named 'DavWWWRoot' in your storage, there are only 'cms' and 'dav' folders. You do not need to create folder with DavWWWRoot name on your server, this is purely ‘client’ Mini-redirector hack.