FTP Clients

1 Built in FTP Clients

Linux and Windows have their built in FTP client software. Those have traditional text-based user interface that could be controlled by some scripting software, like shell, but not suit for operational unattended purposes because their user interface is full duplex and scripting languages are not good at handling those asynchronous communications.


#!/bin/sh
ftp -n ftp.wmo.int << EOF >> logfile 2>&1
user username passrowd
binary
get remote-file1
bye
EOF
Example: Simple Shell Script for FTP

2 GUI Clients

You can find much free FTP client software on the Internet. Most of them are Graphical User Interface (GUI) based client and easy to use, but not suit for unattended operation because they need human interaction to transfer files. Some shareware or commercial software has batch or automatic operation capability with error retry or/and error recovery. Net Vampire and Core FTP Pro are examples.

3 Free client suit for automatic operation

(1) NcFTP

NcFTP is a set of free application programs implementing the FTP. The “ncftp" has many useful functions including macro, and could be controlled via visual mode or command-line mode user interface. The "ncftpget" is a FTP get program for scripts, suit for automatic FTP operation. By using "ncftpget", you can get files by single command line.

> ncftpget -u username -p password ftp.jma.go.jp /tmp /data1.bufr
ncftpget ftp://www.wmo.int/Documents/www/index.txt
> 
Example: ncftpget command execution

(2) Script Software with FTP module

Some Script Languages, like Perl, Ruby, or PHP, are suit for operational unattended FTP because they have FTP client modules and could easily control FTP by their script including error handling.

use Net::FTP;
$ftp = Net::FTP->new(""ftp.wmo.int") or die "Cannot connect to the server.\n";
$ftp->login("username","password") or die "Cannot login.\n";
$ftp->get("filename") or die "Cannot get the file.\n";
Example: Simple Perl script for FTP (with Net::FTP module by CPAN)

(3) AFD

The Automatic File Distributor (AFD) is a tool to transfer files by FTP as well as SMTP, WMO-Socket, and HTTP. The FTP function of the AFD works as a client of FTP, The users should prepare their FTP Servers to receive files delivered from AFD.
The AFD has been developed in the DWD on Unix-like OS, and freely available from it’s Site.

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