FTP Download of Last File

[jland47]

The goal of the script is to grab the last file on the ftp site and save it in a network folder. I am not familiar with debugging the code to see where issues are, and I pulled this code from another article but it seems like it should have been straight forward. Also wondering if my values are in the correct place also, if I am using this example do I enter my values for the ftp host, user, pw, etc. on just the first line "def...."? I inputted my values for the ftp credentials everywhere in the code it had those statements, which I don't think hurts but probably not efficient. When I ran the script, something fired off and the command black screen showed for a milisecond. All of this is really new to me and only had some success writing my own code that called a SQL DB and outputted files, this FTP stuff is racking my head.

from ftplib import FTP
import os
import datetime

def download_most_recent_file('ftp.example.com', 'your_username', 'your_password', '/remote/directory', '/local/directory'):
    try:
        # Connect to FTP server
        ftp = FTP(ftp_host)
        ftp.login(your_username, your_password)
        
        # Change to the specified directory
        ftp.cwd(/remote/directory)
        
        # List files and get the most recent one
        files = ftp.nlst()
        files_with_dates = [(file, ftp.voidcmd(f'MDTM {file}')[4:]) for file in files]
        most_recent_file = max(files_with_dates, key=lambda x: datetime.datetime.strptime(x[1], "%Y%m%d%H%M%S")[0])
        
        # Download the most recent file
        file_name = most_recent_file[0]
        local_file_path = os.path.join(/local/directory, file_name)
        with open(local_file_path, 'wb') as local_file:
            ftp.retrbinary('RETR ' + file_name, local_file.write)
        
        print(f"Downloaded most recent file: {file_name}")
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Error: {e}")
    finally:
        ftp.quit()

# Example usage
ftp_host = 'ftp.example.com'
ftp_user = 'your_username'
ftp_password = 'your_password'
ftp_directory = '/remote/directory'
local_directory = '/local/directory'

download_most_recent_file(ftp_host, ftp_user, ftp_password, ftp_directory, local_directory)

[deanhystad]

The datetime strings returned by ftp MDTM are formatted in a way that they can be sorted without having to convert them to datetime objects. You can replace this:

files = ftp.nlst()
files_with_dates = [(file, ftp.voidcmd(f'MDTM {file}')[4:]) for file in files]
most_recent_file = max(files_with_dates, key=lambda x: datetime.datetime.strptime(x[1], "%Y%m%d%H%M%S")[0])
file_name = most_recent_file[0]

with this:

file_name = max(ftp.nlst(), key=lambda x: ftp.voidcmd(f'MDTM {x}')[4:])

[jland47]

The datetime strings returned by ftp MDTM are formatted in a way that they can be sorted without having to convert them to datetime objects. You can replace this:

files = ftp.nlst()
files_with_dates = [(file, ftp.voidcmd(f'MDTM {file}')[4:]) for file in files]
most_recent_file = max(files_with_dates, key=lambda x: datetime.datetime.strptime(x[1], "%Y%m%d%H%M%S")[0])
file_name = most_recent_file[0]

with this:

file_name = max(ftp.nlst(), key=lambda x: ftp.voidcmd(f'MDTM {x}')[4:])

so just this part could be causing the script to not run?

[deanhystad]

No, that just an observation.

If I were you, I would remove the try/except/finally. Maybe you'll get some useful information about what causes the script to fail.

I don't understand this:

When I ran the script, something fired off and the command black screen showed for a milisecond

How do you run the script? I would run from the command line. Maybe error information is getting displayed in the window that shows for a millisecond. Try opening your favorite command shell and typing

Output:
python whatevethisscripteiscalled.py

[Pedroski55]

Not Python, but very handy!

Assuming you can ssh into your server, a bash script is good for doing file things like you want.

This lovely little 1-liner from stackoverflow 2010 gets you the name of the newest file in path1:

newest=`ls $path1 | sort -n -t _ -k 2 | tail -1`

Pay attention to the back-ticks!

ssh -p 22 -i ~/.ssh/my_cloud_ed25519 pedro@123.123.123.123
user="pedro"
path1="/var/www/mywebpage.com/public_html/contact/messages/"
putpath="/var/www/mywebpage.com/public_html/contact/save_newest/"
# get the name of the newest file
newest=ls $path1 | sort -n -t _ -k 2 | tail -1
mv -v $path1$newest $putpath

Save this as movefile.sh, make it executable, then run it. Only 6 lines!