How to list directory content of remote FTP, recursively

Question

After downloading files from a remote UNIX FTP server, you want to verify that you have downloaded all the files correctly. Minimal you will get information similar to \"dir /s\

Answer 1

Sadly this was written for Unix/Linux users :/

Personally, I would install CYGWIN just to get Linux binaries of LFTP/RSYNC to work on windows, as there appears not to be anything that competes with it.

As @zadok.myopenid.com mentioned rsync, this appears to be a windows build for it using CYGWIN ( if you manage to be able to get ssh access to the box eventually )

http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp

Rsync is handy in that it will compare everything with check sums, and optimally transfer partial change blocks.

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If you get CYGWIN/Linux:

http://lftp.yar.ru/ is my favorite exploration tool for this.

It can do almost everything bash can do, albeit remotely.

Example:

$ lftp mirror.3fl.net.au
lftp mirror.3fl.net.au:~> ls                          
drwxr-xr-x  14 root     root         4096 Nov 27  2007 games
drwx------   2 root     root        16384 Apr 13  2006 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x  15 mirror   mirror       4096 Jul 15 05:20 pub
lftp mirror.3fl.net.au:/> cd games/misc
lftp mirror.3fl.net.au:/games/misc>find
./
./dreamchess/
./dreamchess/full_game/                                                      
./dreamchess/full_game/dreamchess-0.2.0-win32.exe                                      
./frets_on_fire/
./frets_on_fire/full_game/                                                      
./frets_on_fire/full_game/FretsOnFire-1.2.451-macosx.zip                                  
./frets_on_fire/full_game/FretsOnFire-1.2.512-win32.zip
./frets_on_fire/full_game/FretsOnFire_ghc_mod.zip
./gametap_setup.exe
......
lftp mirror.3fl.net.au:/games/misc> du gametap_setup.exe 
32442   gametap_setup.exe
lftp mirror.3fl.net.au:/games/misc> du -sh gametap_setup.exe 
32M     gametap_setup.exe
lftp mirror.3fl.net.au:/games/misc> 

Answer 2

If you have ssh access, use rsync instead. It is a far better data transfer app.

Grab fuse for your OS and load ftpfs. This will let you mount the remote ftp directory locally and you can use dir /s or any other application you want on it.

Answer 3

Assuming you are using simple ftp via command line, Use dir command with -Rl option to search recursively and copy it to a file and then search the file using grep, find or whatever way is supported on your OS.

ftp> dir -Rl education.txt output to local-file: education.txt? y 227 Entering Passive Mode (9,62,119,15,138,239) 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list 226 Transfer complete

Answer 4

Do this :

ls -lR

..................

Answer 5

You can use ftp.listFiles("directory") from apache-commons-net and can write your own BFS or DFS to fetch all the files recursively.