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Brian Picciano
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static/src/_posts/2022-01-01-dav-is-all-you-need.md
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---
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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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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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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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## 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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