Using Python s ftplib to get a directory listing portably

Question

You can use ftplib for full FTP support in Python  However the preferred way of getting a directory listing is     File  ftplib-example-1 py  import ftplib  ftp   ftplib FTP  www python org   ftp login  anonymous    ftplib-example-1    data       ftp dir data append   ftp quit    for line in data      print  -   line   Which yields     python ftplib-example-1 py - total 34 - drwxrwxr-x  11 root     4127         512 Sep 14 14 18   - drwxrwxr-x  11 root     4127         512 Sep 14 14 18    - drwxrwxr-x   2 root     4127         512 Sep 13 15 18 RCS - lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     bin           11 Jun 29 14 34 README - gt  welcome msg - drwxr-xr-x   3 root     wheel        512 May 19  1998 bin - drwxr-sr-x   3 root     1400         512 Jun  9  1997 dev - drwxrwxr--   2 root     4127         512 Feb  8  1998 dup - drwxr-xr-x   3 root     wheel        512 May 19  1998 etc       I guess the idea is to parse the results to get the directory listing  However this listing is directly dependent on the FTP server s way of formatting the list  It would be very messy to write code for this having to anticipate all the different ways FTP servers might format this list   Is there a portable way to get an array filled with the directory listing    The array should only have the folder names

User · Answer

The reliable standardized way to parse FTP directory listing is by using MLSD command  which by now should be supported by all recent decent FTP servers   import ftplib f   ftplib FTP   f connect  localhost   f login   ls      f retrlines  MLSD   ls append  for entry in ls      print entry   The code above will print   modify 20110723201710 perm el size 4096 type dir unique 807g4e5a5  tests modify 20111206092323 perm el size 4096 type dir unique 807g1008e0   xchat2 modify 20111022125631 perm el size 4096 type dir unique 807g10001a   gconfd modify 20110808185618 perm el size 4096 type dir unique 807g160f9a   skychart       Starting from python 3 3  ftplib will provide a specific method to do this    http   bugs python org issue11072 http   hg python org cpython file 67053b135ed9 Lib ftplib py l535

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This is from Python docs   gt  gt  gt  from ftplib import FTP TLS  gt  gt  gt  ftps   FTP TLS  ftp python org    gt  gt  gt  ftps login               login anonymously before securing control  channel  gt  gt  gt  ftps prot p              switch to secure data connection  gt  gt  gt  ftps retrlines  LIST     list directory content securely total 9 drwxr-xr-x   8 root     wheel        1024 Jan  3  1994   drwxr-xr-x   8 root     wheel        1024 Jan  3  1994    drwxr-xr-x   2 root     wheel        1024 Jan  3  1994 bin drwxr-xr-x   2 root     wheel        1024 Jan  3  1994 etc d-wxrwxr-x   2 ftp      wheel        1024 Sep  5 13 43 incoming drwxr-xr-x   2 root     wheel        1024 Nov 17  1993 lib drwxr-xr-x   6 1094     wheel        1024 Sep 13 19 07 pub drwxr-xr-x   3 root     wheel        1024 Jan  3  1994 usr -rw-r--r--   1 root     root          312 Aug  1  1994 welcome msg

User · Answer

I found my way here while trying to get filenames  last modified stamps  file sizes etc and wanted to add my code  It only took a few minutes to write a loop to parse the ftp dir dir list append  making use of python std lib stuff like strip    to clean up the line of text  and split   to create an array   ftp   FTP  sick domain bro   ftp login   ftp cwd  path to data    dir list      ftp dir dir list append     main thing is identifing which char marks start of good stuff    -rw-r--r--   1 ppsrt    ppsrt      545498 Jul 23 12 07 FILENAME FOO                                     that is line 29    for line in dir list     print line 29   strip   split        got yerself an array there bud       EX   545498    Jul    23    12 07    FILENAME FOO

User · Answer

There s no standard for the layout of the LIST response  You d have to write code to handle the most popular layouts  I d start with Linux ls and Windows Server DIR formats  There s a lot of variety out there  though    Fall back to the nlst method  returning the result of the NLST command  if you can t parse the longer list  For bonus points  cheat  perhaps the longest number in the line containing a known file name is its length

User · Answer

Try to use ftp nlst dir    However  note that if the folder is empty  it might throw an error   files       try      files   ftp nlst   except ftplib error perm  resp      if str resp      550 No files found           print  No files in this directory      else          raise  for f in files      print f

User · Answer

I happen to be stuck with an FTP server  Rackspace Cloud Sites virtual server  that doesn t seem to support MLSD  Yet I need several fields of file information  such as size and timestamp  not just the filename  so I have to use the DIR command  On this server  the output of DIR looks very much like the OP s  In case it helps anyone  here s a little Python class that parses a line of such output to obtain the filename  size and timestamp   import datetime  class FtpDir      def parse dir line self  line           words   line split           self filename   words 8          self size   int words 4           t   words 7  split              ts   words 5     -    words 6     -    datetime datetime now   strftime   Y           t 0          t 1          self timestamp   datetime datetime strptime ts    b- d- Y  H  M     Not very portable  I know  but easy to extend or modify to deal with various different FTP servers

User · Answer

That helped me with my code   When I tried feltering only a type of files and show them on screen by adding a condition that tests on each line   Like this   elif command     ls       print  directory of    ftp pwd        data          ftp dir data append       for line in data          x   line split              formats   gz    zip    rar    tar    bz2    xz           if x -1  in formats              print   -   line

[python] Using Python's ftplib to get a directory listing, portably

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