Re: [Web-ftp] Automating file transfers to WEBFTP

[Dan N. <dn...@al...>]

[cc'ing the list again since this might be useful to have in the archives]

In the last episode (Apr 26), Mic...@ol... said:
> This is the first time that I have been asked to do anything with file 
> transfers.  I think they want us to use WEBFTP due to it being very 
> secure.  Is there any documentation out there that can help me with the 
> way you proposed?

If web-ftp is being used on an https:// url to secure a standard
unencrypted FTP server, then you might not have direct access to the
FTP server at all, and will have to go the scripting route.  If it's
just an http:// address, then it's no more secure than the FTP server
itself, and you might as well ask for direct FTP access :)

To script web-ftp access, what you'll have to do is mimic a form post
(for the login step), capture an URL from the page that is returned,
then upload/download using URLs constructed from that.  Here's how to
do it with curl.  This simulates a login (replace myuser, mypass, and
the URL with appropriate values), and puts the returned page in a file
called "outfile":

  curl -L -o outfile -d username=myuser -d password=mypass http://localhost/web-ftp-2.2.1/web-ftp.cgi

In outfile, you will need to extract the base of one of the URLs. 
There are a bunch of them, and they will all look like this:

  <FRAME NORESIZE NAME=HEAD SCROLLING="NO" SRC="http://localhost/web-ftp-2.2.0/web-ftpc.cgi/861961601511/HEAD"></FRAME>

What you're interested in is the
"http://localhost/web-ftp-2.2.0/web-ftpc.cgi/861961601511/" part. 
That's the URL for your logged in session.

To upload a file named "myfile", append "POST" to your base url:

  curl -F uploaded_file=@myfile http://localhost/web-ftp-2.2.0/web-ftpc.cgi/861961601511/POST

To download a file named "myfile", append "DNLD?myfile" to your base
url.  Note that you need to specify the filename in two places, one for
web-ftp to know what to download, and the other to specify the local
filename to create:

  curl -o myfile http://localhost/web-ftp-2.2.0/web-ftpc.cgi/861961601511/DNLD?myfile


-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dn...@al...