FTP Task

FTP

Description

The ftp task implements a basic FTP client that can send, receive, list, delete files, and create directories. See below for descriptions and examples of how to perform each task.

Note: This task depends on external libraries not included in the Ant distribution. See Library Dependencies for more information.

The ftp task makes no attempt to determine what file system syntax is required by the remote server, and defaults to Unix standards. remotedir must be specified in the exact syntax required by the ftp server. If the usual Unix conventions are not supported by the server, separator can be used to set the file separator that should be used instead.

See the section on directory based tasks, on how the inclusion/exclusion of files works, and how to write patterns.

This task does not currently use the proxy information set by the <setproxy> task, and cannot go through a firewall via socks.

Use of the FTP task with Microsoft FTP servers

To use the FTP task with Microsoft FTP servers, you need CVS HEAD of commons-net and jakarta-oro after 2004-02-01 or a release of commons-net after 1.1.0 and jakarta-oro after 2.0.8.

Warning: there have been problems reported concerning the ftp get with newer attribute. Problems might be due to format of ls -l differing from what is expected by commons-net, for instance due to specificities of langage used by the ftp server in the directory listing. If you encounter such a problem, please send an email including a sample directory listing coming from your ftp server (ls -l on the ftp prompt).

Parameters

Attribute	Description	Required
server	the address of the remote ftp server.	Yes
port	the port number of the remote ftp server. Defaults to port 21.	No
userid	the login id to use on the ftp server.	Yes
password	the login password to use on the ftp server.	Yes
remotedir	remote directory on the ftp server see table below for detailed usage	No
action	the ftp action to perform, defaulting to "send". Currently supports "put", "get", "del", "list", "chmod", "mkdir" and "rmdir".	No
binary	selects binary-mode ("yes") or text-mode ("no") transfers. Defaults to "yes"	No
passive	selects passive-mode ("yes") transfers. Defaults to "no"	No
verbose	displays information on each file transferred if set to "yes". Defaults to "no".	No
depends	transfers only new or changed files if set to "yes". Defaults to "no".	No
newer	a synonym for depends. see timediffauto and timediffmillis	No
timediffauto	set to `"true"` to make ant calculate the time difference between client and server. requires write access in the remote directory Since ant 1.6	No
timediffmillis	number of milliseconds to add to the time on the remote machine to get the time on the local machine. Since ant 1.6	No
separator	sets the file separator used on the ftp server. Defaults to "/".	No
umask	sets the default file permissions for new files, unix only.	No
chmod	sets or changes file permissions for new or existing files, unix only. If used with a put action, chmod will be issued for each file.	No
listing	the file to write results of the "list" action. Required for the "list" action, ignored otherwise.	No
ignoreNoncriticalErrors	flag which permits the task to ignore some non-fatal error codes sent by some servers during directory creation: wu-ftp in particular. Default: false	No
skipFailedTransfers	flag which enables unsuccessful file put, delete and get operations to be skipped with a warning and the remainder of the files still transferred. Default: false	No
preservelastmodified	Give the copied files the same last modified time as the original source files (applies to getting files only). (Note: Ignored on Java 1.1)	No; defaults to false.

Note about remotedir attribute

Action	meaning of `remotedir`	use of nested `fileset` (s)
send/put	base directory to which the files are sent	they are used normally and evaluated on the local machine
recv/get	base directory from which the files are retrieved	the remote files located under the `remotedir` matching the include/exclude patterns of the `fileset`
del/delete	base directory from which files get deleted	the remote files located under the `remotedir` matching the include/exclude patterns of the `fileset`
list	base directory from which files are listed	the remote files located under the `remotedir` matching the include/exclude patterns of the `fileset`
mkdir	directory to create	not used
chmod	base directory from which the mode of files get changed	the remote files located under the `remotedir` matching the include/exclude patterns of the `fileset`
rmdir	base directory from which directories get removed	the remote directories located under the `remotedir` matching the include/exclude patterns of the `fileset`

Parameters specified as nested elements

fileset

The ftp task supports any number of nested <fileset> elements to specify the files to be retrieved, or deleted, or listed, or whose mode you want to change.

The attribute followsymlinks of fileset is fully supported on local (put) as well as remote (get, chmod, delete) filesets. Before ant 1.6 there was no support of symbolic links in remote filesets. In order to exclude symbolic links (preserve the behavior of ant 1.5.x and older), you need to explicitly set followsymlinks to false.

Remote filesets do not support selectors.

Sending Files

The easiest way to describe how to send files is with a couple of examples:

  <ftp server="ftp.apache.org"
       userid="anonymous"
       password="me@myorg.com">
    <fileset dir="htdocs/manual"/>
  </ftp>

Logs in to ftp.apache.org as anonymous and uploads all files in the htdocs/manual directory to the default directory for that user.

  <ftp server="ftp.apache.org"
       remotedir="incoming"
       userid="anonymous"
       password="me@myorg.com"
       depends="yes"
  >
    <fileset dir="htdocs/manual"/>
  </ftp>

Logs in to ftp.apache.org as anonymous and uploads all new or changed files in the htdocs/manual directory to the incoming directory relative to the default directory for anonymous.

  <ftp server="ftp.apache.org"
       port="2121"
       remotedir="/pub/incoming"
       userid="coder"
       password="java1"
       depends="yes"
       binary="no"
  >
    <fileset dir="htdocs/manual">
      <include name="**/*.html"/>
    </fileset>
  </ftp>

Logs in to ftp.apache.org at port 2121 as coder with password java1 and uploads all new or changed HTML files in the htdocs/manual directory to the /pub/incoming directory. The files are transferred in text mode. Passive mode has been switched on to send files from behind a firewall.

  <ftp server="ftp.nt.org"
       remotedir="c:\uploads"
       userid="coder"
       password="java1"
       separator="\"
       verbose="yes"

  >
    <fileset dir="htdocs/manual">
      <include name="**/*.html"/>
    </fileset>
  </ftp>

Logs in to the Windows-based ftp.nt.org as coder with password java1 and uploads all HTML files in the htdocs/manual directory to the c:\uploads directory. Progress messages are displayed as each file is uploaded.

Getting Files

Getting files from an FTP server works pretty much the same way as sending them does. The only difference is that the nested filesets use the remotedir attribute as the base directory for the files on the FTP server, and the dir attribute as the local directory to put the files into. The file structure from the FTP site is preserved on the local machine.

  <ftp action="get"
       server="ftp.apache.org"
       userid="anonymous"
       password="me@myorg.com">
    <fileset dir="htdocs/manual">
      <include name="**/*.html"/>
    </fileset>
  </ftp>

Logs in to ftp.apache.org as anonymous and recursively downloads all .html files from default directory for that user into the htdocs/manual directory on the local machine.

Deleting Files

As you've probably guessed by now, you use nested fileset elements to select the files to delete from the remote FTP server. Again, the filesets are relative to the remote directory, not a local directory. In fact, the dir attribute of the fileset is ignored completely.

  <ftp action="del"
       server="ftp.apache.org"
       userid="anonymous"
       password="me@myorg.com">
    <fileset>
      <include name="**/*.tmp"/>
    </fileset>
  </ftp>

Logs in to ftp.apache.org as anonymous and tries to delete all *.tmp files from the default directory for that user. If you don't have permission to delete a file, a BuildException is thrown.

Listing Files

  <ftp action="list"
       server="ftp.apache.org"
       userid="anonymous"
       password="me@myorg.com" 
       listing="data/ftp.listing">
    <fileset>
      <include name="**"/>
    </fileset>
  </ftp>

This provides a file listing in data/ftp.listing of all the files on the FTP server relative to the default directory of the anonymous user. The listing is in whatever format the FTP server normally lists files.

Creating Directories

Note that with the mkdir action, the directory to create is specified using the remotedir attribute.

  <ftp action="mkdir"
       server="ftp.apache.org"
       userid="anonymous"
       password="me@myorg.com" 
       remotedir="some/remote/dir"/>

This creates the directory some/remote/dir beneath the default root directory. As with all other actions, the directory separator character must be correct according to the desires of the FTP server.

Removing Directories

This action uses nested fileset elements to select the directories to remove from the remote FTP server. The filesets are relative to the remote directory, not a local directory. The dir attribute of the fileset is ignored completely. The directories to be removed must be empty, or contain only other directories that have been also selected to be removed by the filesets patterns, otherwise a BuildException will be thrown. Also, if you don't have permission to remove a directory, a BuildException is thrown.

  <ftp action="rmdir"
       server="ftp.apache.org"
       userid="anonymous"
       password="me@myorg.com" 
       remotedir="/somedir" >
    <fileset>
      <include name="dira"/>
      <include name="dirb/**"/>
    </fileset>
  </ftp>

Logs in to ftp.apache.org as anonymous and tries to remove /somedir/dira directory and all the directories tree starting at, and including, /somedir/dirb. When removing the /somedir/dirb tree, it will start at the leaves moving up to the root, so that when it tries to remove a directory it is sure all the directories under it are already removed. Obviuosly all the files in the tree must have been already deleted.

As an example suppose you want to delete everything contained into /somedir, so invoke first the <ftp> task with action="delete", then with action="rmdir" specifying in both cases remotedir="/somedir" and

    <fileset>
        <include name="**"/>
    </fileset>

The directory specified in the remotedir parameter is never selected for remove, so if you need to remove it, specify its parent in remotedir parameter and include it in the <fileset> pattern, like "somedir/**".