WebDAV: can a client modify the mtime of a file?

Question

Is a WebDAV client, per RFC, able to update the modification-date timestamp of a file. WebDAV lists this as the "getlastmodified" property. Being able to do a utime() on files is quite important when moving files as I regard mtime as essential file metadata. But for example doing a propset with cadaver (which I regard as a kind of reference implementation of WebDAV) it constantly maps the getlastmodifed property into is own namespace, thus directing the call away from the actual on-disk file timestamo which could be updated via utime...

Example PROPPATCH request sent by cadaver:

<D:propertyupdate xmlns:D="DAV:">
  <D:set>
   <D:prop>
    <DAV:getlastmodified xmlns="http://webdav.org/cadaver/custom-properties/"&gt;Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT</DAV:getlastmodified>
   </D:prop>
 </D:set>
</D:propertyupdate>

I've got a server running which would update the getlastmodifed property, if only it wasn't mapped into a different namespace...

Answer 1

It sounds to me like you have answered your own question:

If you had a client that sent a PROPPATCH with the correct namespace then you wouldn't have this issue. Maybe try patching cadaver, or at least work out if the DAV client you are going to use exhibits this behavior.