Python-FTP download all files in directory

python ftp ftplib
Sosti picture Sosti · Mar 8, 2011 · Viewed 70k times · Source

I'm putting together a script to download all the files from a directory via FTP. So far I have managed to connect and fetch one file, but I cannot seem to make to work in batch (get all the files from the directory) Here is what I have so far:

from ftplib import FTP
import os, sys, os.path

def handleDownload(block):
    file.write(block)
    print ".",

ddir='C:\\Data\\test\\'
os.chdir(ddir)
ftp = FTP('test1/server/')

print 'Logging in.'
ftp.login('user1\\anon', 'pswrd20')
directory = '\\data\\test\\'

print 'Changing to ' + directory
ftp.cwd(directory)
ftp.retrlines('LIST')

print 'Accessing files'

for subdir, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
    for file in files: 
        full_fname = os.path.join(root, fname);  
        print 'Opening local file ' 
        ftp.retrbinary('RETR C:\\Data\\test\\' + fname,
                       handleDownload,
                       open(full_fname, 'wb'));
        print 'Closing file ' + filename
        file.close();
ftp.close()

I bet you can tell that it does not do much when I run it, so any suggestions for improvements would be greatly appreciated.

Answer

Sosti picture Sosti · Mar 15, 2011

I've managed to crack this, so now posting the relevant bit of code for future visitors:

filenames = ftp.nlst() # get filenames within the directory
print filenames

for filename in filenames:
    local_filename = os.path.join('C:\\test\\', filename)
    file = open(local_filename, 'wb')
    ftp.retrbinary('RETR '+ filename, file.write)

    file.close()

ftp.quit() # This is the “polite” way to close a connection

This worked for me on Python 2.5, Windows XP.

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