Brian Picciano
2 years ago
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title: >- |
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DAV is All You Need |
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description: >- |
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Contacts, calendars, passwords, oh my! |
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tags: tech |
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--- |
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|
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For some time now I've been trying to find an alternative solution to Google |
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Keep for shared note taking. The motivation for this change was two-fold: |
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* Google sucks, and I'm trying to get their products out of my life in favor of |
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self-hosted options. |
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* Google Keep _really_ sucks. Seriously, it can barely load on my Chromebook |
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because of whatever bloated ass web framework they're using for it. It's just |
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a note taking app! |
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|
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So this weekend I buckled down and actually made the switch. The first step was |
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to find something to switch _to_, however, which ended up being not trivial. |
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There's a million different options in this space, but surprisingly few which |
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could fulfill the exact niche we need in our household: |
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* Fully open-source and open protocol. If it's not open it's not worth the |
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bother of switching, cause we'll just have to do it all again once whatever |
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product we switch to gets acqui-hired by a food delivery app. |
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* Self-hosted using a _simple_ server-side component. I'm talking something that |
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listens on a public port and saves data to a file on disk, and _that's it_. |
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No database processes, no message queues, no bullshit. We're not serving a |
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million users here, there's no reason to broaden the attack surface |
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unnecessarily. |
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* Multi-platform support, including mobile. Our primary use-case here is our |
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grocery list, which needs to be accessible by everyone everywhere. |
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I've already got a Nextcloud instance running at home, and there is certainly a |
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notes extension for it, so that could have been an option here. But Nextcloud |
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very much does not fall into the second point above: it's not simple. It's a |
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giant PHP app that uses Postgres as a backend, has its own authentication and |
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session system, and has a plugin system. Frankly, it was easily the biggest |
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security hole on the entire server, and I wasn't eager to add usage to it. |
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Happily, I found another solution. |
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|
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## WebDAV |
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There's a project called [Joplin](https://joplinapp.org/) which implements a |
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markdown-based notes system with clients for Android, iPhone, Linux, Mac, and |
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Windows. Somewhat interestingly there is _not_ a web client for it, but on |
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further reflection I don't think that's a big deal... no bloated javascript |
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frameworks to worry about at least. |
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In addition to their own cloud backend, Joplin supports a number of others, with |
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the most interesting being WebDAV. WebDAV is an XML-based extension to HTTP |
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which allows for basic write operations on the server-side, and which uses |
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HTTP's basic auth for authentication. You can interact with it using curl if you |
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like, it really can't get simpler. |
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[Caddy](https://caddyserver.com/) is the server I use to handle all incoming |
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HTTP requests to my server, and luckily there's a semi-official |
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[WebDAV](https://github.com/mholt/caddy-webdav) plugin which adds WebDAV |
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support. With that compiled in, the `Caddyfile` configuration is nothing more |
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than: |
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``` |
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hostname.com { |
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route { |
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basicauth { |
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sharedUser sharedPassword |
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} |
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webdav { |
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root /data/webdav |
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} |
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} |
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} |
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``` |
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With that in place, any Joplin client can be pointed at `hostname.com` using the |
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shared username/assword, and all data is stored directly to `/data/webdav` by |
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Caddy. Easy-peasy. |
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## CardDAV/CalDAV |
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Where WebDAV is an extension of HTTP to allow for remotely modifying files |
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genearlly, CardDAV and CalDAV are extensions of WebDAV for managing remote |
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stores of contacts and calendar events, respectively. At least, that's my |
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understanding. |
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Nextcloud has its own Web/Card/CalDAV service, and that's what I had been, up |
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till this point, using for syncing my contacts and calendar from my phone. But |
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now that I was setting up a separate WebDAV endpoint, I figured it'd be worth |
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setting up a separate Card/CalDAV service and get that much closer to getting |
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off Nextcloud entirely. |
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There is, as far as I know, no Card or CalDAV extension for Caddy, so I'd still |
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need a new service running. I came across |
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[radicale](https://radicale.org/v3.html), which fits the bill nicely. It's a |
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simple CalDAV and CardDAV server which saves directly to disk, much like the |
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Caddy WebDAV plugin. With that running, I needed only to add the following to my |
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`Caddyfile`, above the `webdav` directive: |
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``` |
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handle /radicale/* { |
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uri strip_prefix /radicale |
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reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:5454 { |
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header_up X-Script-Name /radicale |
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} |
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} |
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``` |
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Now I could point the [DAVx5](https://www.davx5.com/) app on my phone to |
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`hostname.com/radicale` and boom, contact and calendar syncing was within reach. |
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I _did_ have a lot of problems getting DAVx5 working properly, but those were |
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more to do with Android than self-hosting, and I eventually worked through them. |
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## Passwords |
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At this point I considered that the only thing I was still really using |
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Nextcloud for was password management, a la Lastpass or 1Password. I have a lot |
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of gripes with Nextcloud's password manager, in addition to my aforementioned |
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grips with Nextcloud generally, so I thought it was worth seeing if some DAV or |
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another could be the final nail in Nextcloud's coffin. |
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A bit of searching around led me to [Tusk](https://subdavis.com/Tusk/), a chrome |
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extension which allows the chrome browser to fetch a |
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[KeePassXC](https://keepassxc.org/) database from a WebDAV server, decode it, |
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and autofill it into a website. Basically perfect. I had only to export my |
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passwords from Nextcloud as a CSV, import them into a fresh KDBX file using the |
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KeePassXC GUI, place the file in my WebDAV folder, and point Tusk at that. |
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I found the whole experience of using Tusk to be extremely pleasant. Everything |
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is very well labeled and described, and there's appropriate warnings and such in |
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places where someone might commit a security crime (e.g. using the same password |
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for WebDAV and their KDBX file). |
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My one gripe is that it seems to be very slow to unlock the file in practice. I |
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don't _think_ this has to do with my server, as Joplin is quite responsive, so |
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it could instead have to do with my KDBX file's decryption difficulty setting. |
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Perhaps Tusk is doing the decryption in userspace javascript... I'll have to |
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play with it some. |
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But it's a small price to be able to turn off Nextcloud completely, which I have |
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now done. I can sleep easier at night now, knowing there's not some PHP |
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equivalent to Log4j which is going to bite me in the ass one day while I'm on |
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vacation. |
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