Parsing Ftpwebrequest Listdirectorydetails Line

Parsing FtpWebRequest ListDirectoryDetails line

Not sure if you still need this, but this is the solution i came up with:

Regex regex = new Regex ( @"^([d-])([rwxt-]{3}){3}\s+\d{1,}\s+.*?(\d{1,})\s+(\w+\s+\d{1,2}\s+(?:\d{4})?)(\d{1,2}:\d{2})?\s+(.+?)\s?$",
    RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.Multiline | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace );

Match Groups:

1. object type:
   
   
   • d : directory
   • - : file
2. Array[3] of permissions (rwx-)
3. File Size
4. Last Modified Date
5. Last Modified Time
6. File/Directory Name

C# class to parse WebRequestMethods.Ftp.ListDirectoryDetails FTP response

One solution I came across is EdtFTPnet

EdtFTPnet seems to be quite a feature packed solution that handles lots of different FTP options so is ideal.

It's the free open source solution that I've how employed for http://www.ftp2rss.com (a little tool I needed myself but figured might be useful to others also).

How to parse this? ftpWebRequest ListDirectorDetials

var value = "09-17-11  01:00AM               942038 my.zip";
var tokens = value.Split(new char[] { ' ' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
if (tokens.Length > 3)
{
    var test = new Test
    {
        DateCreated = DateTime.ParseExact(tokens[0] + tokens[1], "MM-dd-yyHH:mmtt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture),
        Size = int.Parse(tokens[2]),
        Name = tokens[3]
    };

    // at this stage:
    // test.DateCreated = 17/09/2011 01:00AM
    // test.Size = 942038
    // test.Name = "my.zip"
}

How to read the creation date from a string[] with FTP ListDirectoryDetails?

Not really an answer to the question, but at first I ended up with making a separate call to the FTP server to get the LastModified datetime of the file(not a good solution) and added them to a list of file names with creation dates.
In the end it turned out that the creation date of the file is no longer important for the project, so I just used the standard FTP ListDirectory.

Extracting file names from WebRequestMethods.Ftp.ListDirectoryDetails

The final solution was to use regex and split it using groups. This resolved all issues and allowed me to get the file / directory name and whether it was a directory or file.

string regex =
@"^" +                          //# Start of line
@"(?<dir>[\-ld])" +             //# File size          
@"(?<permission>[\-rwx]{9})" +  //# Whitespace          \n
@"\s+" +                        //# Whitespace          \n
@"(?<filecode>\d+)" +
@"\s+" +                        //# Whitespace          \n
@"(?<owner>\w+)" +
@"\s+" +                        //# Whitespace          \n
@"(?<group>\w+)" +
@"\s+" +                        //# Whitespace          \n
@"(?<size>\d+)" +
@"\s+" +                        //# Whitespace          \n
@"(?<month>\w{3})" +            //# Month (3 letters)   \n
@"\s+" +                        //# Whitespace          \n
@"(?<day>\d{1,2})" +            //# Day (1 or 2 digits) \n
@"\s+" +                        //# Whitespace          \n
@"(?<timeyear>[\d:]{4,5})" +    //# Time or year        \n
@"\s+" +                        //# Whitespace          \n
@"(?<filename>(.*))" +          //# Filename            \n
@"$";                           //# End of line

var split = new Regex(regex).Match(line);
string dir = split.Groups["dir"].ToString();
string filename = split.Groups["filename"].ToString();
bool isDirectory = !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(dir) && dir.Equals("d", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);

Thanks to: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adarshk/archive/2004/09/15/sample-code-for-parsing-ftpwebrequest-response-for-listdirectorydetails.aspx for providing the regex.

Parsing file name out of ListDirectoryDetails with Regex

To parse out just a filename, just get the 9th token:

^(?:[^ ]+ +){8}(.*)$

Regex regex = new Regex("^(?:[^ ]+ +){8}(.*)$");
Match match = regex.Match(line);
string filename = match.Groups[1].Value;

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Though for such a simple parsing, you can actually split the line to tokens by space. You do not need a regular expression.

string[] tokens = line.Split(new[] { ' ' }, 9, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
string filename = tokens[8];

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But if you need just a file name, do not use the ListDirectoryDetails in the first place. Use the ListDirectory. It returns file name only.

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And if you need parsing file attributes, use an FTP client that supports the FTP MLSD command. The FtpWebRequest does not support this.

FtpWebRequest only return file names with ListDirectoryDetails

The method to get object names of ftp always return the complete list (directories and files). I limit the names by extension, for example

var xmlFiles = files.FindAll( foo => foo.ToUpper().Contains( ".XML" )|| foo.ToUpper().Contains( ".TXT" ));

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