Can I copy files to a Network Place from a script or the command line?

Question

Is it possible, in Windows XP, to copy files to a Network Place from the command line, a batch file or, even better, a PowerShell script?

What sent me down this road of research was trying to publish files to a WSS 3.0 document library from a user's machine. I can't map a drive to the library in question because the WSS site is only available to authenticate via NTLM on a port other than 80 or 443. I suppose I could alternately use the WSS web services to push the files out, but I'm really curious about the answer to this question now.

Answer 1

Using a batch file, you can both log on to the resource and copy the file:

The Batch File would contain the following:

net use \\{dest-machine}\{destfolder} {password} /user:{username}
copy {file} \\{dest-machine}\{destfolder}

e.g.

net use \\Development\myfolder mypassword /user:Administrator
copy newfile.c \\development\myfolder

Answer 2

If you are referring to a windows box, just use xcopy. It is pretty standard to have xcopy available.

xcopy src \\dest-machine\shared-library-name\dest
xcopy \\src-machine\shared-library-name\dest src

Answer 3

Powershell uses the abstraction of Providers to provide a common interface into datastores. These seem to stick with the common noun "Item", so you can get a complete list with man *item*. If you know another way to copy and otherwise work with data from a store, you might as well use it, but using the cmdlets provides a better "learn-once, use-often" approach. In your case you could:

Copy-Item test.txt -Destination \\dest-machine\share

Copy-item also supports the -Credential parameter if you need it.

Answer 4

"Network Places" doesn't really have an API, it's just a bunch of shortcuts, and the SharePoint share uses a Shell Extension, if I recall correctly.

All of that to say: accessing Sharepoint as a file system from PowerShell also requires an extension, the SharePoint Provider.

Answer 5

you could use the 'net' commands to authenticate and then copy the files.

copy src \\dest-machine\shared-library-name\dest

I'm not really sure exactly how to handle authentication if it's needed.

Answer 6

From what I'm seeing, it seems that it's not possible to directly access/ manipulate a Network Place from the command line, be it in PowerShell or the plain ol' command prompt.

@slipsec (#13899): Thanks for the suggestion, but PowerShell doesn't support the port number in the destination path any more than the net use command does.

So the best thing I can figure to do in my particular situation is bite the bullet and buy something like WebDrive to enable drive mapping via WebDAV on non-standard ports, or do some different configuration (e.g. separate web app with a different IP address and host headers) in SharePoint to expose the site via NTLM on a standard port.

Answer 7

If it's something you need to script, you should consider NAnt.

It's a mainly used for build scripts, but it's very powerful and reasonably easy to get started with.

There's also NAntContrib and the nant ftp task which should help you out.

Answer 8

I could be wrong about this, but I think that neither Nick's robocopy solution or Nathan's copy command solution will work. Robocopy seems to want a mapped drive, which I can't do because it's not running on port 80 or 443, and Windows can't handle a path that includes the port in a UNC-style name:

copy src \\dest-machine:45000\shared-library-name\dest

I didn't see a NAnt task that would handle this situation, either.

I also know there are tools that will allow me to map WebDAV drives. I was more wondering if there was some way to make use of the Network Places that have been set up without using the GUI.

Answer 9

Yes you can. I suggest using a tool like robocopy.