Python - download all folders, subfolders, and files with the python ftplib module

Question

I have been working all day trying to figure out how to use the python ftplib module to download folders, subfolders, and files from an ftp server but I could only come up with this.

from ftplib import FTP
import sys, ftplib

sys.tracebacklimit = 0 # Does not display traceback errors
sys.stderr = "/dev/null" # Does not display Attribute errors

Host = "ftp.debian.org"
Port = 21
Username = ""
Password = ""

def MainClass():
    global ftp
    global con
    Host
    Port
    ftp = FTP()
    con = ftp.connect(Host, Port) # Connects to the host with the specified port

def grabfile():
    source = "/debian/"
    filename = "README.html"
    ftp.cwd(source)
    localfile = open(filename, 'wb')
    ftp.retrbinary('RETR ' + filename, localfile.write)
    ftp.quit()
    localfile.close()

try:
    MainClass()
except Exception:
    print "Not Connected"
    print "Check the address", Host + ":" + str(Port)
else:
    print "Connected"

if ftplib.error_perm and not Username == "" and Password == "":
    print "Please check your credentials\n", Username, "\n", Password

credentials = ftp.login(Username, Password)
grabfile()

This python script will download a README.html file from ftp.debian.org but, I would like to be able to download whole folders with files and subfolders in them and I cannot seem to figure that out. I have searched around for different python scripts using this module but I cannot seem to find any that do what I want.

Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

Note: I would still like to use python for this job but it could be a different module such as ftputil or any other one out there.

Thanks in advance, Alex

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:27

1

The short solution: You could possibly just run: "wget -r ftp://username:password@ftp.debian.org/debian/*" to get all the files under the debian directory. Then you can process the files in python.

The long solution: You can go over every directory listing by using ftplib, getting a directory listing parsing it and then getting every file and recursing into directories. If you search the web you'd find previous posts on stackoverlow which solve this issue

edited May 23 '17 at 10:27

Community

1
1

answered Oct 10 '15 at 05:31

borisp

180
6

That is so funny that you bring up that post because that is the code that did not make sense to me. – Alex Lowe Oct 10 '15 at 05:44
could you please explain what this line of code is doing in that post?`os.mkdir(destination[0:len(destination)-1]+path)` – Alex Lowe Oct 10 '15 at 05:46
`path` - path to the new directory being copied from the server. `directory` - the destination directory where are files will be copied to. So this line creates the directory into which the files in `path` will be copied to – borisp Oct 10 '15 at 05:51

Python - download all folders, subfolders, and files with the python ftplib module

1 Answers1