Apache Ant User Manual

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.

Warning: for the get and delete actions to work properly with a Windows 2000 ftp server, it needs to be configured to generate Unix style listings, and not the default MS-DOS listing. Or someone needs to write the code to parse MS-DOS listings -any takers?

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	the directory to which to upload files on the ftp server.	No
action	the ftp action to perform, defaulting to "send". Currently supports "put", "get", "del", "list" and "mkdir".	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.	No
separator	sets the file separator used on the ftp server. Defaults to "/".	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

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.