Introduction

WebFileSys is a web based file manager and web picture album. It runs as a standard Java web application in any servlet container. Although WebFileSys is a platform-independent Java application, it offers most functions that file managers designed for a single operating system provide. A rich set of picture browsing and manipulation functions as well as the Google Maps and Google Earth integration make it a good choice for sharing photos on the intranet or internet. WebFileSys is a multi-user application, each user can have it's own home directory. WebFileSys can be used by webspace providers to give the users convenient access to their files. WebFileSys does not need any external database. All persistent information is stored in cached XML files. WebFileSys is consistently using UTF-8 character encoding to ensure optimum support for different languages. The highly optimized folder and file browsing functions based on Ajax technology make WebFileSys one of the fastest web file managers available.

New in release 2.8.0

WebFileSys is Open Source now! The source code is being hosted at github.
Some refactoring to prepare code for going open source.
Folders can be decorated now with user-selected icons and text colors.

Users and Security

WebFileSys can be run in open registration mode (self-registration for new users allowed) or in closed registration mode (only an admin user can create new accounts).
WebFileSys users can be assigned to one of the roles "admin", "user" and "webspace" with different access rights and functions available. Self-registered users are always assigned to role "webspace".
For each user a read/write and a read-only password can be defined.
User information is stored in a cached XML file and the passwords are encrypted.
Experienced Java programmers can replace the default XML-based user manager by a self-written user manager class to access an existing user database.
If secure communication via the HTTPS protocol is required, the servlet container or the webserver in front of the servlet container must be configured to use the SSL protocol.

Software Requirements

WebFileSys is a standard Java web application and should run in any servlet container using JDK 1.5 or higher.
Most extensive tests have been performed on the Apache tomcat servlet engine (version 5 and higher). Other servlet containers on which WebFileSys has been run successfully are jetty and IBM WebSphere.

On client side the following browsers are supported:
  • Mozilla Firefox version 3.x and higher
  • Google Chrome 8 and higher
  • Apple Safari 4.0 and higher
  • Opera 10.x and higher
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer version 7, 8
The mobile interface has been tested with the Android 1.5 and 2.2 web browser.

The following features must be enabled in the browser configuration:
  • Javascript
  • session cookies
  • iframes
  • XmlHttpRequest (for Ajax functions)
  • MSIE only: save ActiveX Objects (for Ajax)
All these features are enabled by default in a new installed browser instance.
The browser must be configured to allow popups for the WebFileSys server site.

File and Directory Management Functions

WebFileSys offers a rich set of functions to manage folders and files. See a nearly complete list of available functions under "Features".

Fastpath function

WebFileSys remembers the directories that the user has visited.
The fastpath function shows a reduced folder tree containing only these recently visted directories plus bookmarked folders for quick navigation.

Search Functions

WebFileSys can search directory trees for files matching a given filename pattern and/or containing a search phrase (full text search). The search can also include attached meta information (descriptions).
The search can be restricted to files within a given modification date range.
Searching for files assigned to a certain category is possible too.

Bookmarks

Lost in the deepness of the filesystem tree? Save the path to important folders as bookmarks. The bookmark button in the menu bar opens the bookmark list and with a single mouse click you can navigate back to the eleventh subfolder level where your important configuration files reside (this is just an example!). Bookmarked folders are also included in the reduced fastpath folder tree.

Statistics

WebFileSys can determine various statistical data about a directory tree and display it as graphical charts.
The optional download statistic function counts the downloads of each file.

Attaching meta information to files and directories

WebFileSys allows to attach meta information to files and directories, for example a description for a picture or comments to the contents of a directory.
Meta information is displayed as headline or as title-text of icons or images.
The meta information is stored in a cached XML file in the same directory where the file resides.
If a file or directory with existing meta information is copied or moved by WebFileSys, the meta information is moved together with the file/folder.

Special Picture Functions

WebFileSys provides a pageable thumbnail view of all image files (JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP) in the current directory.
Optionally WebFileSys can create and store thumbnail files for large images, which are used instead of the original files for the thumbnail view (to optimize performance). Thumbnails are automatically garbage-collected if the original image has been deleted.

The automatic or manual slideshow function shows pictures scaled to fit on the screen.

WebFileSys can convert images from JPEG, GIF and PNG to JPEG and PNG. Resizing of pictures is supported. Under Windows lossless JPEG transformation (rotation, mirroring) is provided, under Unix the availability of lossless image transformation depends on the presence of the jpegtran program. A copyright text can be stamped on the image. Pictures can be cropped.

WebFileSys can create a "picture story" out of picture files and their associated descriptions. The pictures are shown in a pageable window in a 2-column table with the description text beside the image.

For JPEG pictures produced by digital cameras the camera meta data (called EXIF data) can be displayed, including for example date of exposure, apperture, flash used or not, GPS location data and many more. JPEG picture files from digicams can be renamed to the exposure date.

WebFileSys can send invitations to view published picture albums via e-mail. The invitation contains an URL link with an access code, that gives visitors a time-limited read-only access to the pictures of a folder tree.

MP3 music file support

WebFileSys allows to view and edit the MP3 Tags of MP3 music files. Information stored in MP3 tags include title, artist, album, year of publishing, genre and additional comments.
Optionally WebFileSys can automatically extract MP3 tag information from all MP3 files found in the folders browsed by the user. The MP3 tag info is stored as meta information (description) of the file.

Folder Synchronization

The folder synchronisation function can be used to make incremental backups of folders or simply for keeping the contents of two folders in snyc.

DiffTree

The DiffTree function shows a folder tree containing only changed subfolders and files. This is a great way to visualize the differences between to folder trees. A good usage example for the DiffTree is to show which parts of the source code of a software development project have changed between two releases.

E-mail Notification

WebFileSys can send e-mails via a SMTP server to notify administrators of certain events, for example successful user self-registration and failed login attempts.
WebFileSys can be configured to send a welcome e-mail to new users after successful self-registration.

Disk quota support

For users of role "webspace" WebFileSys provides an optional disk quota checking.
For each user the administrator can specify the maximum allowed size of the files below the user's home directory.
Disk quota checking runs once a day as a low-priority background process.
In case of exceeded disk quota the user and the administrator can optionally be notified by e-mail.

Customization of the user interface

Most parts of the WebFileSys user interface are generated via XSL transformation from XML data. By customizing the XSL stylesheets the resulting HTML pages can be changed to fit into a given corporate design or to match the design of an existing web site.

Layout Customization with CSS

The appearance of the user interface can be customized by CSS stylesheet files. You can change colors, background colors and fonts of most parts of the WebFileSys user interface.
Each user can be assigned one of the available CSS stylesheets.

Included software from other authors

Under Windows WebFileSys uses the jpegtran program from the Independent JPEG Group (http://www.ijg.org) for lossless JPEG image transformation.
A library from Drew Noakes called ExifExtractor is used to extract EXIF data from digicam pictures.
XML and XSLT libraries from the Apache projects Xerces and Xalan are used. The libraries have been re-packaged to reduce the size of the WebFileSys download.
The Apache Commons net library is used for FTP client support.
The GifEncoder from the ACME library (http://www.acme.com/java) is used to write GIF images.
The NEUQUANT Neural-Net quantization algorithm by Anthony Dekker is being used for color quantization in GIF image creation.
A Javascript calendar from Matt Kruse is used for the search date range selection.
Browsers that do not support XSLT or have no Javascript interface to the XSLT engine are using the Google Javascript XSLT library ajaxslt for partial page rendering.
WebFileSys uses the Google Maps API to select and display geographic location data for pictures and folders.
The Java source file viewer is based on the Java2Html converter written by Markus Gebhard (http://www.java2html.de/).
TAR archives are managed using the Java Tar Package written by Tim Endres (http://www.trustice.com).
The Java class view handler requires the JAD decompiler written by Pavel Kouznetsov (not included in the WebFileSys distribution, http://www.kpdus.com/jad.html).
The diff algorithm written by Neil Fraser at Google is used for finding the differences between to files in the compare function.
The LZC implementation from Igor Gatis hosted at google code (http://code.google.com/p/compress-j2me) is used for compress/uncompress functions.
The color picker script jscolor written by Jan Odvarko (http://jscolor.com) is used to select folder text colors.
Spanish translation contributed by Miguel Sanz.
Sample ViewHandler for stamping a PDF document with userid contributed by Leonardo F. Cardoso.

License

WebFileSys is licensed under the GPL V3.
The author gives no warrantee at all! Use the program at your own risk.
The author asks you to register your copy of WebFileSys for free by sending an e-mail to the address given under Contact. Please include information about the platform (operating system, servlet container) you are using as WebFileSys server, the version of WebFileSys you run, and the purpose you are using it for.


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