watchDirectory Help > Plugins > Automatically Upload files to an FTP server
Automatically Upload files to an FTP server
This plugin for watchDirectory automatically uploads new and changed files to your FTP server.
Settings for this plugin
Server
Enter the name of your FTP server.
Port
Enter the port number to use for your FTP server. The port number depends on
your FTP server and the upload protocol you use, ask the administrator of your server
for the correct settings. Commonly used ports are:
FTP protocol - port 21
SFTP protocol - port 22
FTPS (insecure data) - port 990
FTPS (secure data) - port 990
FTPS (implicit) - port 990
Protocol
This selects the FTP protocol to use for the FTP connection. Contact your
network administrator for the protocol to use.
Your choices are:
- FTP
This is an insecure protocol, your password and files are transfered unencrypted. - SFTP
A packet oriented protocol, running on top of SSH2 (secure shell). The SSH layer encrypts all communication. - FTPS (insecure data) and FTPS (secure data)
Sometimes called FTP/S, FTP-SSL and explicit FTPS. The "insecure data" variant only uses SSL encryption to encrypt your username and password. The "secure data" variant also encrypts the files during an upload. Note that the "Secure data" variant is slower due to this encryption overhead. - FTPS (implicit)
This is almost the same as the other FTPS variants, you would select this if you have an older FTP server with an added SSL "wrapper".
Passive mode
Passive mode controls who creates a data connection to transfer files after the initial connection
is established.
When Passive mode is off, the FTP server will create the connection to receive a file.
Some firewalls and proxies do not allow this kind of incoming connection.
When Passive mode is on, watchDirectory will create the additional connections
to upload files.
Userid and Password
Enter the username and password used to connect to the FTP server. Your password
will be stored encrypted in the task configuration file.
Proxy settings
If you are behind a proxy server, you can enter its details here. Contact your
network administrator for the correct settings.
Base directory or Remote File
If you do not use Dynamic naming, enter, or browse, the directory on your FTP server where you want to upload files to. You will need
to enter all other settings before you use the Browse button.
If you do use Dynamic Naming, you can use the Browse button to select the "root" of your FTP server, and the use the {tag} button
to add Dynamic Name tags. When you use dynamic naming you enter the file name of the uploaded file here.
Transfer Mode
Select how files should be uploaded. Choose between:
- Always Binary
All files are uploaded "as is". No linefeed translation (CRLF -> LF) is ever done. Use this setting if the remote host (your FTP server) is Windows based. - Always Text
All files are uploaded with linefeed translation (CRLF -> LF). - Auto
Files with an extension listed inside C:\Program Files\watchDirectory\plugins\wdopAutoFtp\textfiles.txt will be uploaded using Text mode. All other files are transfered binary. By default, the following extensions are considered Text files:
txt, html, shtml, php, asp, htm, cfm, cgi, css, dhtml, js and phtml
If you use "Always Text" as the upload method, and binary files (programs, Word documents) are uploaded they will be corrupted. These files should always be uploaded as binary!
Use Dynamic Naming
If this option is checked, you can use special {tags} in the filename field to create a Dynamic Name for the uploaded file.
Create the same directory structure on your FTP server
If this option is checked, the files will be uploaded to a directory on your FTP server
corresponding to the source directory. New directories on your server will be created if needed.
If you do not check this option, all files are uploaded into the Base Directory.
Create files and directories using lowercase names
As most FTP servers run on Unix hosts (where Hello.TXT and hEllo.txt are treated as
different files), you can tell watchDirectory to create all files using lowercase names.
Keep connection open as long as possible
If you check this option, watchDirectory will not disconnect from your FTP server after uploading a file.
This can dramatically improve upload performance when there are several files to be uploaded quickly after
each other.
Try to connect to the FTP server
This allows you to set how often the plugin will try to connect to the FTP server in case it is (temporarily) unavailable.
If you set this to "Just Once", your task will abort when it can not connect to your FTP server.
Upload files with a .partial extension
If you select this option, files will be uploaded with an extra extension. So, the file hello.txt will be uploaded
as hello.txt.partial. When the upload is complete, the file is renamed back to hello.txt.
Remove the file after successful upload
This will delete the file after it has been uploaded to the FTP site.
Move the file to...
You can also move the file to another location after the upload. Use Dynamic Naming
to set the correct new location.
