ftputil is a high-level FTP client library for the Python programming language. ftputil implements a virtual file system for accessing FTP servers, that is, it can generate file-like objects for remote files. The library supports many functions similar to those in the os, os.path and shutil modules. ftputil has convenience functions for conditional uploads and downloads, and handles FTP clients and servers in different timezones.
Since version 2.4.2 the following changed:
As announced over a year ago, the xreadlines method for FTP file objects has been removed, and exceptions can no longer be accessed via the ftputil namespace. Only use ftp_error to access the exceptions.
The distribution contains a small tool find_deprecated_code.py to scan a directory tree for the deprecated uses. Invoke the program with the --help option to see a description.
Upload and download methods now accept a callback argument to do things during a transfer. Modification time comparisons in upload_if_newer and download_if_newer now consider the timestamp precision of the remote file which may lead to some unneccesary transfers. These can be avoided by waiting at least a minute between calls of upload_if_newer (or download_if_newer) for the same file. See the documentation for details.
The FTPHost class got a keep_alive method. It should be used carefully though, not routinely. Please read the description in the documentation.
The source code was restructured. The tests are now in a test subdirectory and are no longer part of the release archive. You can still get them via the source repository. Licensing matters have been moved to a common LICENSE file.
The documentation for ftputil can be found in the file ftputil.txt (reStructuredText format) or ftputil.html (recommended, generated from ftputil.txt).
To use ftputil, you need Python, at least version 2.4. Python is a programming language, available from http://www.python.org for free.
If you have an older version of ftputil installed, delete it or move it somewhere else, so that it doesn't conflict with the new version!
Unpack the archive file containing the distribution files. If you had an hypothetical ftputil version 1.2, you would type at the shell prompt:
tar xzf ftputil-1.2.tar.gz
However, if you read this, you probably unpacked the archive already. ;-)
Make the directory to where the files were unpacked your current directory. Consider that after unpacking, you have a directory ftputil-1.2. Make it the current directory with
cd ftputil-1.2
Type
python setup.py install
at the shell prompt. On Unix/Linux, you have to be root to perform the installation. Likewise, you have to be logged in as administrator if you install on Windows.
If you want to customize the installation paths, please read http://docs.python.org/inst/inst.html .
If you have easy_install installed, you can install the current version of ftputil directly from the Python Package Index (PyPI) without downloading the package explicitly.
Just type
easy_install ftputil
on the command line. You'll probably need root/administrator privileges to do that (see above).
ftputil is Open Source Software. It is distributed under the new/modified/revised BSD license (see http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.html ).
Stefan Schwarzer <sschwarzer@sschwarzer.net>
Evan Prodromou <evan@bad.dynu.ca> (lrucache module)
Please provide feedback! It's certainly appreciated. :-)