System:
Linux Redhat enterprise with Nautilus 2.28.4

Setup:
- connect to a WebDAV server. For a test I used a free account on http://www.mydrive.net/
- the WebDAV storage contains one folder with one file for testing

Action:
- I drag the folder from the WebDAV storage to a local directory

Expected result:
- the folder and the contained file are copied to the local storage

Actual result:
- The operation shows a progress dialog but the result of the copy operation is a 0-byte file with the name of the folder

Analysis:
I used wireshark to analyze the network traffic and the problem appears to be that Nautilus sends an HTTP GET request to the folder URL. This causes an error on the server. Per WebDAV spec the client should not send a GET request to the folder URL but only to file URLs.

Trace:
(1) Nautilus sends a PROPFIND for the folder, this request looks ok and the response states that this is actually a folder (<d:colllection/>)

PROPFIND /Sample HTTP/1.1
Host: webdav.mydrive.ch
Depth: 0
Content-Type: application/xml
Apply-To-Redirect-Ref: F
User-Agent: gvfs/1.4.3
Authorization: Basic XXXXXX
Content-Length: 235

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
 <D:propfind xmlns:D="DAV:">
  <D:prop>
<D:creationdate/>
<D:displayname/>
<D:getcontentlength/>
<D:getcontenttype/>
<D:getetag/>
<D:getlastmodified/>
<D:resourcetype/>
  </D:prop>
 </D:propfind>HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:51:20 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.16 (Debian)
DAV: 1, 3, extended-mkcol, 2
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 616
Connection: close
Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<d:multistatus xmlns:d="DAV:" xmlns:s="http://sabredav.org/ns"><d:response><d:href>/Sample/</d:href><d:propstat><d:prop><d:getlastmodified xmlns:b="urn:uuid:c2f41010-65b3-11d1-a29f-00aa00c14882/" b:dt="dateTime.rfc1123">Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:06:16 +0000</d:getlastmodified><d:resourcetype><d:collection/></d:resourcetype></d:prop><d:status>HTTP/1.1 200 Ok</d:status></d:propstat><d:propstat><d:prop><d:creationdate/><d:displayname/><d:getcontentlength/><d:getcontenttype/><d:getetag/></d:prop><d:status>HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found</d:status></d:propstat></d:response></d:multistatus>

(2) The next request is a GET on the folder URL. The server responds with an "error", in this case a redirect to some help page. This GET request seems to be the cause of the problem:

GET /Sample HTTP/1.1
Host: webdav.mydrive.ch
User-Agent: gvfs/1.4.3
Authorization: Basic XXXX

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:51:20 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.16 (Debian)
Location: http://www.mydrive.ch/help#webdav
Content-Length: 0
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8


I can see the errorneous behavious on other WebDAV implementations, too