I recently needed to write a bash script for a CI-pipeline deployment and came across some useful snippets for using cURL to upload file via the FTP protocol. You can find the snippets below.

What is cURL?

From Wikipedia:

cURL (pronounced ‘curl’) is a computer software project providing a library (libcurl) and command-line tool (curl) for transferring data using various network protocols. The name stands for “Client URL”, which was first released in 1997.

cURL with FTP

cURL is an immensely powerful library/command-line tool that enables you to execute CRUD operations against a number of different endpoints or using numerous protocols. Particularly for complex task execution with CI pipelines like TravisCI or CircleCI, it can be very helpful to upload a build step or generated assets to a webspace via FTP.

Here’s the list of the most useful snippets I found:

Login using cURL via FTP

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curl -p "ftp://ftp.myserver.com/" --user "myuser@myserver.com:mypassword"

Upload using cURL via FTP

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curl -p "ftp://ftp.myserver.com/" --user "myuser@myserver.com:mypassword" -T "./test.xml"

If you plan to upload to a subdirectory, e.g.: ./mysubdir/test.xml, add the --ftp-create-dirs flag to the command.

Download using cURL via FTP

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curl -p "ftp://ftp.myserver.com/%2ftest.xml" --user "myuser@myserver.com:mypassword" -o "./test.xml"

Rename using cURL via FTP

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curl -p "ftp://ftp.myserver.com/" --user "myuser@myserver.com:mypassword" -Q "-RNFR ./test.xml"  -Q "-RNTO ./my-new-name.xml"

Delete using cURL via FTP

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curl -v "ftp://ftp.myserver.com/%2fmy-new-name.xml" --user "myuser@myserver.com:mypassword" -Q "DELE my-new-name.xml"

Upload all files in a folder via FTP

This command will upload all files in my-test-directory to the defined location at the FTP endpoint.

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find ./my-test-directory -type f -exec curl -v -u "myuser@myserver.com:mypassword" --ftp-create-dirs -T {} ftp://ftp.myserver.com/{} \;

Credits

Courtesy to Mukesh Kumar’s post, where I got inspiration for some of my snippets:
http://www.mukeshkumar.net/articles/curl/how-to-use-curl-command-line-tool-with-ftp-and-sftp