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Normalization of Filenames

1 Description

Windows does not support all kind of characters in folder- and filenames (other OS's do). This leads to several problems:

• ILIAS shows an ugly message in the repository next to every file which contains one of the unsupported characters.
• The Webdav Feature of ILIAS does not show such files and folders (connected from a windows pc)
• You can not easily store the ILIAS-Data on an Windows Server
• Backup from a Linux to a Windows Server are not so easy

Therefor it would be great to remove / replace unsupported characters from filenames at the time there are uploaded to ilias (most or all of them are not useful in filenames anyway).
The unsupported characters are: \ / : * ? " < > |

See also
http://www.ilias.de/mantis/view.php?id=14538

2 Additional Information

• Idea / concept: Pascal Schmitt / pascal.schmitt@phzh.ch
• Maintainer:
• Development: Feature is to be developed by
• Test cases by:

3 Discussion

W. Randelshofer, 2009-06-04

> Therefore it would be great to remove / replace unsupported characters from filenames at the time there are uploaded to ilias (most or all of them are not useful in
> filenames anyway).

Please note that such a normalization can not be done if the ILIAS WebDAV interface is enabled.

This is because WebDAV is essentially a file system service and thus must support the superset of the file name conventions of all client operating system which can connect to ILIAS. Failure to do so breaks the file system 'contract' between client and server, which results in undefined behavior - such as corrupted files and/or crashes of the client.

This is the same issue that we faced with support for hidden files. Without support for hidden files, Mac OS X clients can not use a WebDAV interface.

Pascal, 5 November 2012: Still love this feature! In our environment ilias runs on a linux server but we have to backup on a windows drive and this causes problems with the special characters.
Founding should be possible by PH Zürich. Just ask!

Wolfgang, 06.11.2012: OS X supports (now) WebDAV. I would also apreciate this feature because webdav seems to be still very important.

JF 10 Dec 2012: We agree that file handling can be improved. There are lots of different issues related to Webdav, backup, zipping directory structures in several ILIAS components like File, MediaObject, Exercise, T&A, User, ... We first would like to try get funding for writing concept on all these issues to get an overview. (rough estimation 2-3 PT)

4 Follow-up