Develop Reference

C# Download/Read log file from FTP

I have a few .log files on an FTP server. I need to download them on my drive. Alternatively, read and display contents. I've read related posts here, and came up with the code:
DOWNLOAD
public void DownloadFile(String infile)
{
String myUrl = String.Format("ftp://{0}/{1}", IpAddress, infile);
FtpWebRequest request = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(new Uri(myUrl));
request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(UserName, Password);
request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.DownloadFile;
FtpWebResponse response = (FtpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream();
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(responseStream);
String output = String.Format("{0}", infile);
using (StreamWriter destination = new StreamWriter(output))
{
destination.Write(reader.ReadToEnd());
destination.Flush();
}
reader.Close();
response.Close();
}
READ
public string ReadTxtFile2(String infile)
{
WebClient request = new WebClient();
String url = String.Format("ftp://{0}/{1}", IpAddress, infile);
request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(UserName, Password);
try
{
// also tried: String fileString = request.DownloadString(url);
byte[] newFileData = request.DownloadData(url);
string fileString = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(newFileData);
return fileString;
}
catch (WebException e)
{
return e.Message;
}
}
Somehow the download returns me an empty 0 kb file and a read() function outputs an empty contents. I can't find out why, any help?
NOTE: files do exist on server, I can list them.

C# Download sub folders from FTP site [duplicate]

General Info
I'm still in the process of learning C#. To help myself out, I'm trying to create a program that will automatically synchronise all of my local projects with a folder on my FTP server. This so that whether I'm at school or at home, I always have the same projects available to me.
I know there are programs like Dropbox that already do this for me, but I figured creating something like that myself will teach me a lot along the way.
The problem
My first step towards my goal was to just download all files, subdirectories and subfiles from my FTP server. I've managed to download all files from a directory with the code below. However, my code only lists the folder names and the files in the main directory. Subfolders and subfiles are never returned and never downloaded. Aside from that, the server returns a 550 error because I'm trying to download the folders as if they are files. I've been on this for 4+ hours now, but I just can't find anything on how to fix these problems and make it work. Therefor I'm hoping you guys will help me out :)
Code
public string[] GetFileList()
{
string[] downloadFiles;
StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
WebResponse response = null;
StreamReader reader = null;
try
{
FtpWebRequest request = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
request.UseBinary = true;
request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.ListDirectory;
request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(ftpUserName, ftpPassWord);
request.KeepAlive = false;
request.UsePassive = false;
response = request.GetResponse();
reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
string line = reader.ReadLine();
while (line != null)
{
result.Append(line);
result.Append("\n");
line = reader.ReadLine();
}
result.Remove(result.ToString().LastIndexOf('\n'), 1);
return result.ToString().Split('\n');
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
if (reader != null)
{
reader.Close();
}
if (response != null)
{
response.Close();
}
downloadFiles = null;
return downloadFiles;
}
}
private void Download(string file)
{
try
{
string uri = url + "/" + file;
Uri serverUri = new Uri(uri);
if (serverUri.Scheme != Uri.UriSchemeFtp)
{
return;
}
FtpWebRequest request = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url + "/" + file);
request.UseBinary = true;
request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.DownloadFile;
request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(ftpUserName, ftpPassWord);
request.KeepAlive = false;
request.UsePassive = false;
FtpWebResponse response = (FtpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream();
FileStream writeStream = new FileStream(localDestnDir + "\\" + file, FileMode.Create);
int Length = 2048;
Byte[] buffer = new Byte[Length];
int bytesRead = responseStream.Read(buffer, 0, Length);
while (bytesRead > 0)
{
writeStream.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
bytesRead = responseStream.Read(buffer, 0, Length);
}
writeStream.Close();
response.Close();
}
catch (WebException wEx)
{
MessageBox.Show(wEx.Message, "Download Error");
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "Download Error");
}
}

The FtpWebRequest does not have any explicit support for recursive file operations (including downloads). You have to implement the recursion yourself:
List the remote directory
Iterate the entries, downloading files and recursing into subdirectories (listing them again, etc.)
Tricky part is to identify files from subdirectories. There's no way to do that in a portable way with the FtpWebRequest. The FtpWebRequest unfortunately does not support the MLSD command, which is the only portable way to retrieve directory listing with file attributes in FTP protocol. See also Checking if object on FTP server is file or directory.
Your options are:
Do an operation on a file name that is certain to fail for file and succeeds for directories (or vice versa). I.e. you can try to download the "name". If that succeeds, it's a file, if that fails, it's a directory.
You may be lucky and in your specific case, you can tell a file from a directory by a file name (i.e. all your files have an extension, while subdirectories do not)
You use a long directory listing (LIST command = ListDirectoryDetails method) and try to parse a server-specific listing. Many FTP servers use *nix-style listing, where you identify a directory by the d at the very beginning of the entry. But many servers use a different format. The following example uses this approach (assuming the *nix format)
void DownloadFtpDirectory(
string url, NetworkCredential credentials, string localPath)
{
FtpWebRequest listRequest = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
listRequest.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.ListDirectoryDetails;
listRequest.Credentials = credentials;
List<string> lines = new List<string>();
using (var listResponse = (FtpWebResponse)listRequest.GetResponse())
using (Stream listStream = listResponse.GetResponseStream())
using (var listReader = new StreamReader(listStream))
{
while (!listReader.EndOfStream)
{
lines.Add(listReader.ReadLine());
}
}
foreach (string line in lines)
{
string[] tokens =
line.Split(new[] { ' ' }, 9, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
string name = tokens[8];
string permissions = tokens[0];
string localFilePath = Path.Combine(localPath, name);
string fileUrl = url + name;
if (permissions[0] == 'd')
{
if (!Directory.Exists(localFilePath))
{
Directory.CreateDirectory(localFilePath);
}
DownloadFtpDirectory(fileUrl + "/", credentials, localFilePath);
}
else
{
FtpWebRequest downloadRequest =
(FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(fileUrl);
downloadRequest.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.DownloadFile;
downloadRequest.Credentials = credentials;
using (FtpWebResponse downloadResponse =
(FtpWebResponse)downloadRequest.GetResponse())
using (Stream sourceStream = downloadResponse.GetResponseStream())
using (Stream targetStream = File.Create(localFilePath))
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[10240];
int read;
while ((read = sourceStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
{
targetStream.Write(buffer, 0, read);
}
}
}
}
}
Use the function like:
NetworkCredential credentials = new NetworkCredential("user", "mypassword");
string url = "ftp://ftp.example.com/directory/to/download/";
DownloadFtpDirectory(url, credentials, #"C:\target\directory");
If you want to avoid troubles with parsing the server-specific directory listing formats, use a 3rd party library that supports the MLSD command and/or parsing various LIST listing formats; and recursive downloads.
For example with WinSCP .NET assembly you can download whole directory with a single call to the Session.GetFiles:
// Setup session options
SessionOptions sessionOptions = new SessionOptions
{
Protocol = Protocol.Ftp,
HostName = "ftp.example.com",
UserName = "user",
Password = "mypassword",
};
using (Session session = new Session())
{
// Connect
session.Open(sessionOptions);
// Download files
session.GetFiles("/directory/to/download/*", #"C:\target\directory\*").Check();
}
Internally, WinSCP uses the MLSD command, if supported by the server. If not, it uses the LIST command and supports dozens of different listing formats.
The Session.GetFiles method is recursive by default.
In most cases, Session.GetFilesToDirectory is a more straightforward equivalent to Session.GetFiles:
session.GetFiles("/directory/to/download", #"C:\target\directory").Check();
(I'm the author of WinSCP)

C# Download all files and subdirectories through FTP

General Info
I'm still in the process of learning C#. To help myself out, I'm trying to create a program that will automatically synchronise all of my local projects with a folder on my FTP server. This so that whether I'm at school or at home, I always have the same projects available to me.
I know there are programs like Dropbox that already do this for me, but I figured creating something like that myself will teach me a lot along the way.
The problem
My first step towards my goal was to just download all files, subdirectories and subfiles from my FTP server. I've managed to download all files from a directory with the code below. However, my code only lists the folder names and the files in the main directory. Subfolders and subfiles are never returned and never downloaded. Aside from that, the server returns a 550 error because I'm trying to download the folders as if they are files. I've been on this for 4+ hours now, but I just can't find anything on how to fix these problems and make it work. Therefor I'm hoping you guys will help me out :)
Code
public string[] GetFileList()
{
string[] downloadFiles;
StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
WebResponse response = null;
StreamReader reader = null;
try
{
FtpWebRequest request = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
request.UseBinary = true;
request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.ListDirectory;
request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(ftpUserName, ftpPassWord);
request.KeepAlive = false;
request.UsePassive = false;
response = request.GetResponse();
reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
string line = reader.ReadLine();
while (line != null)
{
result.Append(line);
result.Append("\n");
line = reader.ReadLine();
}
result.Remove(result.ToString().LastIndexOf('\n'), 1);
return result.ToString().Split('\n');
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
if (reader != null)
{
reader.Close();
}
if (response != null)
{
response.Close();
}
downloadFiles = null;
return downloadFiles;
}
}
private void Download(string file)
{
try
{
string uri = url + "/" + file;
Uri serverUri = new Uri(uri);
if (serverUri.Scheme != Uri.UriSchemeFtp)
{
return;
}
FtpWebRequest request = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url + "/" + file);
request.UseBinary = true;
request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.DownloadFile;
request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(ftpUserName, ftpPassWord);
request.KeepAlive = false;
request.UsePassive = false;
FtpWebResponse response = (FtpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream();
FileStream writeStream = new FileStream(localDestnDir + "\\" + file, FileMode.Create);
int Length = 2048;
Byte[] buffer = new Byte[Length];
int bytesRead = responseStream.Read(buffer, 0, Length);
while (bytesRead > 0)
{
writeStream.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
bytesRead = responseStream.Read(buffer, 0, Length);
}
writeStream.Close();
response.Close();
}
catch (WebException wEx)
{
MessageBox.Show(wEx.Message, "Download Error");
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "Download Error");
}
}

The FtpWebRequest does not have any explicit support for recursive file operations (including downloads). You have to implement the recursion yourself:
List the remote directory
Iterate the entries, downloading files and recursing into subdirectories (listing them again, etc.)
Tricky part is to identify files from subdirectories. There's no way to do that in a portable way with the FtpWebRequest. The FtpWebRequest unfortunately does not support the MLSD command, which is the only portable way to retrieve directory listing with file attributes in FTP protocol. See also Checking if object on FTP server is file or directory.
Your options are:
Do an operation on a file name that is certain to fail for file and succeeds for directories (or vice versa). I.e. you can try to download the "name". If that succeeds, it's a file, if that fails, it's a directory.
You may be lucky and in your specific case, you can tell a file from a directory by a file name (i.e. all your files have an extension, while subdirectories do not)
You use a long directory listing (LIST command = ListDirectoryDetails method) and try to parse a server-specific listing. Many FTP servers use *nix-style listing, where you identify a directory by the d at the very beginning of the entry. But many servers use a different format. The following example uses this approach (assuming the *nix format)
void DownloadFtpDirectory(
string url, NetworkCredential credentials, string localPath)
{
FtpWebRequest listRequest = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
listRequest.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.ListDirectoryDetails;
listRequest.Credentials = credentials;
List<string> lines = new List<string>();
using (var listResponse = (FtpWebResponse)listRequest.GetResponse())
using (Stream listStream = listResponse.GetResponseStream())
using (var listReader = new StreamReader(listStream))
{
while (!listReader.EndOfStream)
{
lines.Add(listReader.ReadLine());
}
}
foreach (string line in lines)
{
string[] tokens =
line.Split(new[] { ' ' }, 9, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
string name = tokens[8];
string permissions = tokens[0];
string localFilePath = Path.Combine(localPath, name);
string fileUrl = url + name;
if (permissions[0] == 'd')
{
if (!Directory.Exists(localFilePath))
{
Directory.CreateDirectory(localFilePath);
}
DownloadFtpDirectory(fileUrl + "/", credentials, localFilePath);
}
else
{
FtpWebRequest downloadRequest =
(FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(fileUrl);
downloadRequest.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.DownloadFile;
downloadRequest.Credentials = credentials;
using (FtpWebResponse downloadResponse =
(FtpWebResponse)downloadRequest.GetResponse())
using (Stream sourceStream = downloadResponse.GetResponseStream())
using (Stream targetStream = File.Create(localFilePath))
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[10240];
int read;
while ((read = sourceStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
{
targetStream.Write(buffer, 0, read);
}
}
}
}
}
Use the function like:
NetworkCredential credentials = new NetworkCredential("user", "mypassword");
string url = "ftp://ftp.example.com/directory/to/download/";
DownloadFtpDirectory(url, credentials, #"C:\target\directory");
If you want to avoid troubles with parsing the server-specific directory listing formats, use a 3rd party library that supports the MLSD command and/or parsing various LIST listing formats; and recursive downloads.
For example with WinSCP .NET assembly you can download whole directory with a single call to the Session.GetFiles:
// Setup session options
SessionOptions sessionOptions = new SessionOptions
{
Protocol = Protocol.Ftp,
HostName = "ftp.example.com",
UserName = "user",
Password = "mypassword",
};
using (Session session = new Session())
{
// Connect
session.Open(sessionOptions);
// Download files
session.GetFiles("/directory/to/download/*", #"C:\target\directory\*").Check();
}
Internally, WinSCP uses the MLSD command, if supported by the server. If not, it uses the LIST command and supports dozens of different listing formats.
The Session.GetFiles method is recursive by default.
In most cases, Session.GetFilesToDirectory is a more straightforward equivalent to Session.GetFiles:
session.GetFiles("/directory/to/download", #"C:\target\directory").Check();
(I'm the author of WinSCP)

How can i display the ftp files content and directories to look like the ftp content on the server?

This method does work and does adding the files to the listBox.
But some of the files are directories and i wonder if there is a way to display the directories witha directory symbol this yellow directory near it ?
public void getFtpFileList()
{
List<string> files = new List<string>();
try
{
FtpWebRequest request = FtpWebRequest.Create("ftp://"+ txtHost.Text) as FtpWebRequest;
request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.ListDirectory;
request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(txtUsername.Text, txtPassword.Text);
request.UsePassive = true;
request.UseBinary = true;
request.KeepAlive = false;
FtpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as FtpWebResponse;
Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream();
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(responseStream);
while (!reader.EndOfStream)
{
files.Add(reader.ReadLine());
}
foreach (string file in files)
{
listBox1.Items.Add(file);
}
reader.Close();
responseStream.Close();
response.Close();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
}
}
This is a screenshot on the top left is my program and under it it's my ftp.
I want somehow to display on the listBox as much as close the way it look like in my ftp server.

Get FTP directory content issue if it's empty

I have code what gets a content of some FTP directory. At some servers I've tested it works fine.
But at one server this method throws an exception when we try to get response.
public static List<string> ListDirectory(string dirPath, string ftpUser, string ftpPassword)
{
List<string> res = new List<string>();
FtpWebRequest request = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(dirPath);
request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.ListDirectory;
request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(ftpUser, ftpPassword);
request.KeepAlive = false;
FtpWebResponse response = (FtpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream();
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(responseStream);
while (!reader.EndOfStream)
{
res.Add(reader.ReadLine());
}
reader.Close();
response.Close();
return res;
}
At catch section I have something like this
catch (WebException e)
{
FtpWebResponse response = (FtpWebResponse)e.Response;
/*in my case response.Status = ActionNotTakenFileUnavailableOrBusy*/
....
}
It works before but now it fails when folder is empty. If there is something there it works. And I can see this directory with TotalCommander.
Any ideas why?

This is an example on how to get a listing of a remote directory using the free library System.Net.FtpClient available from CodePlex.
I have used it in many occasions and, in my opinion, is more easy to work with
public void GetListing()
{
using (FtpClient conn = new FtpClient())
{
conn.Host = "your_ftp_site_url";
conn.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("your_user_account", "your_user_password");
foreach (FtpListItem item in conn.GetListing(conn.GetWorkingDirectory(), FtpListOption.Modify | FtpListOption.Size))
{
switch (item.Type)
{
case FtpFileSystemObjectType.Directory:
Console.WriteLine("Folder:" + item.Name);
break;
case FtpFileSystemObjectType.File:
Console.WriteLine("File:" + item.Name);
break;
}
}
}
}
You can find the download from this pages