System.Net.FtpWebRequest GetDateTimestamp example

Question

I'm looking for a short bit of sample code which uses the System.Net.FtpWebRequest namespace to get the timestamp of a specified remote file on an FTP server. I know I need to set the Method property of my request object to WebRequestMethods.Ftp.GetDateTimestamp but I'm not sure how to get the response back into a System.DateTime object.

See also [Download files from FTP if they are created within the last hour](https://stackoverflow.com/q/10121911/850848). — Martin Prikryl, Sep 22 '22 at 09:22

score 17 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 03 '18 at 04:35

17

Yep - thats pretty much what I ended up with. I went with something like this

request = FtpWebRequest.Create("ftp://ftp.whatever.com/somefile.txt");

request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.GetDateTimestamp;
request.Proxy = null;

using (FtpWebResponse resp = (FtpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())
{
        Console.WriteLine(resp.LastModified);
}

edited Apr 03 '18 at 04:35

Jimi

29,621
8
43
61

answered Jun 26 '09 at 08:55

Dav Evans

4,031
7
41
60

2

One problem with this approach - it automatically converts the time to the client's current time zone, not the server's time zone. I found that I needed to use WebRequestMethods.Ftp.ListDirectoryDetails and parse the time out of the line that the file is found on in order to get the modified date of the server's time zone. – NightOwl888 Nov 30 '12 at 17:21

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 03 '18 at 04:36

Something like this:

DateTime DateValue;    

FtpWebRequest Request = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(yourUri);
Request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.GetDateTimestamp;
Request.UseBinary = false;

using (FtpWebResponse Response = (FtpWebResponse)Request.GetResponse())
using (TextReader Reader = new StringReader(Response.StatusDescription))
{
    string DateString = Reader.ReadLine().Substring(4);
    DateValue = DateTime.ParseExact(DateString, "yyyyMMddHHmmss", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.DateTimeFormat);
}

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 10 '12 at 15:50

1

To get the date field only but not the time, do exactly as the first answer in this thread with the following exception:

Console.WriteLine(response.LastModified().ToShortDateString);

edited Jan 10 '12 at 15:50

shanethehat

15,460
11
57
87

answered Jan 10 '12 at 15:45

Carlos Morales

19
1

System.Net.FtpWebRequest GetDateTimestamp example

3 Answers3

Linked