C# Download All Files and Subdirectories Through Ftp

C# Download all files and subdirectories through FTP

The FtpWebRequest does not have any explicit support for recursive file operations (including downloads). You have to implement the recursion yourself:

• List the remote directory
• Iterate the entries, downloading files and recursing into subdirectories (listing them again, etc.)

Tricky part is to identify files from subdirectories. There's no way to do that in a portable way with the FtpWebRequest. The FtpWebRequest unfortunately does not support the MLSD command, which is the only portable way to retrieve directory listing with file attributes in FTP protocol. See also Checking if object on FTP server is file or directory.

Your options are:

• Do an operation on a file name that is certain to fail for file and succeeds for directories (or vice versa). I.e. you can try to download the "name". If that succeeds, it's a file, if that fails, it's a directory.
• You may be lucky and in your specific case, you can tell a file from a directory by a file name (i.e. all your files have an extension, while subdirectories do not)
• You use a long directory listing (LIST command = ListDirectoryDetails method) and try to parse a server-specific listing. Many FTP servers use *nix-style listing, where you identify a directory by the d at the very beginning of the entry. But many servers use a different format. The following example uses this approach (assuming the *nix format)

void DownloadFtpDirectory(
    string url, NetworkCredential credentials, string localPath)
{
    FtpWebRequest listRequest = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
    listRequest.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.ListDirectoryDetails;
    listRequest.Credentials = credentials;

    List<string> lines = new List<string>();

    using (var listResponse = (FtpWebResponse)listRequest.GetResponse())
    using (Stream listStream = listResponse.GetResponseStream())
    using (var listReader = new StreamReader(listStream))
    {
        while (!listReader.EndOfStream)
        {
            lines.Add(listReader.ReadLine());
        }
    }

    foreach (string line in lines)
    {
        string[] tokens =
            line.Split(new[] { ' ' }, 9, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
        string name = tokens[8];
        string permissions = tokens[0];

        string localFilePath = Path.Combine(localPath, name);
        string fileUrl = url + name;

        if (permissions[0] == 'd')
        {
            if (!Directory.Exists(localFilePath))
            {
                Directory.CreateDirectory(localFilePath);
            }

            DownloadFtpDirectory(fileUrl + "/", credentials, localFilePath);
        }
        else
        {
            FtpWebRequest downloadRequest =
                (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(fileUrl);
            downloadRequest.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.DownloadFile;
            downloadRequest.Credentials = credentials;

            using (FtpWebResponse downloadResponse =
                      (FtpWebResponse)downloadRequest.GetResponse())
            using (Stream sourceStream = downloadResponse.GetResponseStream())
            using (Stream targetStream = File.Create(localFilePath))
            {
                byte[] buffer = new byte[10240];
                int read;
                while ((read = sourceStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
                {
                    targetStream.Write(buffer, 0, read);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Use the function like:

NetworkCredential credentials = new NetworkCredential("user", "mypassword");
string url = "ftp://ftp.example.com/directory/to/download/";
DownloadFtpDirectory(url, credentials, @"C:\target\directory");

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If you want to avoid troubles with parsing the server-specific directory listing formats, use a 3rd party library that supports the MLSD command and/or parsing various LIST listing formats; and recursive downloads.

For example with WinSCP .NET assembly you can download whole directory with a single call to the Session.GetFiles:

// Setup session options
SessionOptions sessionOptions = new SessionOptions
{
    Protocol = Protocol.Ftp,
    HostName = "ftp.example.com",
    UserName = "user",
    Password = "mypassword",
};

using (Session session = new Session())
{
    // Connect
    session.Open(sessionOptions);

    // Download files
    session.GetFiles("/directory/to/download/*", @"C:\target\directory\*").Check();
}

Internally, WinSCP uses the MLSD command, if supported by the server. If not, it uses the LIST command and supports dozens of different listing formats.

The Session.GetFiles method is recursive by default.

(I'm the author of WinSCP)

Download all files and sub-directories from FTP folder in VB.NET

I KNOW YOU MIGHT BE LAZY TO READ ALL THAT, BUT THIS IS THE ANSWER!!! THE CODE IS AT THE END :D

Hello,

It is very simple to do using the WinSCP library which is available for C# and VB.NET - here is the full answer:

Firsly, install the WinSCP library to your project, see here: https://winscp.net/eng/docs/library#downloading_and_installing_the_assembly

Or if you are lazy to do it, then just download the library and add the DLL file as a reference in your project.

And now let's download the whole directory including its files and its sub-directories to the local storage.

You have 2 options:

• Session.GetFiles to download even if the files & directories are already downloaded.

• Session.SynchronizeDirectories to download the files & directories if they does not exists, and also will download the the modified files which already exists. (BEST and better than the first option).

I used the second option of course because it is the best one ever. However, if you want to use the Session.GetFiles method... you can see the VB.NET example here: https://winscp.net/eng/docs/library_session_getfiles#vbnet

And here is how I used the second option: https://winscp.net/eng/docs/faq_script_modified_files

As you can see, everything is explained great!

Basically use synchronize local instead of get and synchronize remote
instead of put.

With WinSCP .NET assembly that means, use
Session.SynchronizeDirectories, with argument mode set to
SynchronizationMode.Remote or SynchronizationMode.Local instead of
Session.GetFiles or Session.PutFiles respectively.

And as I wanted to download the files from the FTP Server to my local PC, then here is what I used (SynchronizeDirectories):

1. So yes! Of course Imports WinSCP first :-)

2. Use this code, because the code on https://winscp.net/eng/docs/library_session_synchronizedirectories#vbnet is for SFTP (port 22) and not FTP (port 21) ... and also it uses SynchronizeMode.Remote which uploads from your PC to the FTP server , so in the code below I replaced .Remote with .Local

   Public Shared Function Main() As Integer
   
       Try 
           ' Setup session options
           Dim sessionOptions As New SessionOptions
           With sessionOptions
               .Protocol = Protocol.Ftp
               .HostName = "example.com"
               .UserName = "user"
               .Password = "mypassword"
           End With
   
           Using session As New Session
               ' Will continuously report progress of synchronization
               AddHandler session.FileTransferred, AddressOf FileTransferred
   
               ' Connect
               session.Open(sessionOptions)
   
               ' Synchronize files
               Dim synchronizationResult As SynchronizationResult
               synchronizationResult = _
                   session.SynchronizeDirectories( _
                       SynchronizationMode.Local, "d:\www", "/home/martin/public_html", False)
   
               ' Throw on any error
               synchronizationResult.Check()
           End Using
   
           Return 0
       Catch e As Exception
           Console.WriteLine("Error: {0}", e)
           Return 1
       End Try
   
   End Function
   
   Private Shared Sub FileTransferred(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As TransferEventArgs)
   
       If e.Error Is Nothing Then
           'Console.WriteLine("Upload of {0} succeeded", e.FileName)
       Else
           'Console.WriteLine("Upload of {0} failed: {1}", e.FileName, e.Error)
       End If
   
       If e.Chmod IsNot Nothing Then
           If e.Chmod.Error Is Nothing Then
               'Console.WriteLine("Permisions of {0} set to {1}", e.Chmod.FileName, e.Chmod.FilePermissions)
           Else
               'Console.WriteLine("Setting permissions of {0} failed: {1}", e.Chmod.FileName, e.Chmod.Error)
           End If
       Else
           'Console.WriteLine("Permissions of {0} kept with their defaults", e.Destination)
       End If
   
       If e.Touch IsNot Nothing Then
           If e.Touch.Error Is Nothing Then
               'Console.WriteLine("Timestamp of {0} set to {1}", e.Touch.FileName, e.Touch.LastWriteTime)
           Else
               'Console.WriteLine("Setting timestamp of {0} failed: {1}", e.Touch.FileName, e.Touch.Error)
           End If
       Else
           ' This should never happen during "local to remote" synchronization
           'Console.WriteLine("Timestamp of {0} kept with its default (current time)", e.Destination)
       End If
   
   End Sub
   

Don't forget to replace the credentials and the paths..

One more thing? Good luck on your project! :-)

How to download files from ftp from particular folder

I think 3 lines of your Download method have to be corrected as follows:

1.

string uri = "ftp://" + txtFtpAddress.Text.Trim() + "/" + "txtlodername.Text" + "/" + file;

should be:

string uri = "ftp://" + txtFtpAddress.Text.Trim() + "/" + txtFTPFolderName.Text.Trim() + "/" + file;

2.

reqFTP = (FtpWebRequest)FtpWebRequest.Create(new Uri(txtFtpAddress.Text + "/" + txtFTPFolderName + "/" + file));

should be:

reqFTP = (FtpWebRequest)FtpWebRequest.Create(new Uri(uri));

3.

FileStream writeStream = new FileStream("D\\Temp"  + file, FileMode.Create);  

should be:

FileStream writeStream = new FileStream("D:\\Temp\\"  + file, FileMode.Create);  

How to Download Numerous Files from FTP using C#?

The FtpWebRequest and FtpWebResponse objects are really designed do make single requests (i.e. download single files, etc.)

You're looking for an FTP client. There isn't one in the .NET Framework, but there's a free one, System.Net.FtpClient that apparently works quite well.

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