11.5 `ftplib` -- FTP protocol client

This module defines the class FTP and a few related items. The FTP class implements the client side of the FTP protocol. You can use this to write Python programs that perform a variety of automated FTP jobs, such as mirroring other ftp servers. It is also used by the module urllib to handle URLs that use FTP. For more information on FTP (File Transfer Protocol), see Internet RFC 959.

Here's a sample session using the ftplib module:

>>> from ftplib import FTP
>>> ftp = FTP('ftp.cwi.nl')   # connect to host, default port
>>> ftp.login()               # user anonymous, passwd user@hostname
>>> ftp.retrlines('LIST')     # list directory contents
total 24418
drwxrwsr-x   5 ftp-usr  pdmaint     1536 Mar 20 09:48 .
dr-xr-srwt 105 ftp-usr  pdmaint     1536 Mar 21 14:32 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 ftp-usr  pdmaint     5305 Mar 20 09:48 INDEX
 .
 .
 .
>>> ftp.retrbinary('RETR README', open('README', 'wb').write)
'226 Transfer complete.'
>>> ftp.quit()

The module defines the following items:

FTP ([host[, user[, passwd[, acct]]]]): Return a new instance of the FTP class. When host is given, the method call connect(host) is made. When user is given, additionally the method call login(user, passwd, acct) is made (where passwd and acct default to the empty string when not given).

all_errors: The set of all exceptions (as a tuple) that methods of FTP instances may raise as a result of problems with the FTP connection (as opposed to programming errors made by the caller). This set includes the four exceptions listed below as well as socket.error and IOError.

error_reply: Exception raised when an unexpected reply is received from the server.

error_temp: Exception raised when an error code in the range 400-499 is received.

error_perm: Exception raised when an error code in the range 500-599 is received.

error_proto: Exception raised when a reply is received from the server that does not begin with a digit in the range 1-5.

See Also:

Module netrc:: Parser for the .netrc file format. The file .netrc is typically used by FTP clients to load user authentication information before prompting the user.

The file Tools/scripts/ftpmirror.py in the Python source distribution is a script that can mirror FTP sites, or portions thereof, using the ftplib module. It can be used as an extended example that applies this module.

Subsections

11.5.1 FTP Objects

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11.5 ftplib -- FTP protocol client

11.5 `ftplib` -- FTP protocol client