FTP Uploading files using MSDOS script

Recently I was working in a static Web Site and at the time I need to upload it to the server, I realize there were several files and directories to upload. As I’ve never been a big fan of FTP programs other than the command line provided in each OS, and, instead of searching if there were already a public solution, I started thinking in an automation script to upload the files.

The basic idea of an automation script is to read the contents of a directory, create a commands script for FTP and then execute the generated script. But it also needs to be recursive within internal directories.

As I was working with Windows, the script I created is for MS DOS

The way to call it is:

uploadfiles <Root directory to upload>

Where the given root directory is where the desired files to upload are stored.

Taking a little walkthrough of the script, it works like these:

1. Set working variables and defaults.

set user=<set FTP User>

set pass=<FTP Password>

set site=<site to connect>

set base=<target directory>

set file=<temporary commands file>

2. Next thing to do is to start creating the commands file, some of the used values have been set in step 1

echo user %user% %pass% >> %file%

echo cd %base% >> %file%

echo pwd >> %file%

echo bin >> %file%

echo hash >> %file%

3. The directory processing logic was implemented in a subroutine, we use it to process the root directory

call :processDir . "%workDir%" 0 %file% x

4. Once the directory was processed, we return just to call the FTP to use the commands file and upload all found files.

ftp -n %site% < %file%

The processDir subroutine is called recursively to process all found subdirectories. Once the script is finished, it is intended to work within a FTP session, once in the session if might change directories in remote site, but not in local PC, so the script need to handle all calls to local files as a relative path from where the script was called. This routine works as follows:

1. Local variables are set, from received parameters

set localPath=%~1

set localDir=%~2

set localID=%3

set localFile=%4

set quotes=1

set fullpath=%localPath%\%localDir%

2. For each processed directory, the script assumes that all need to be created

echo mkdir %localDir% >> %localFile%

echo cd %localDir% >> %localFile%

echo pwd >> %localFile%

3. The is finds all the directories of the current one and call itself to process them

FOR /F "usebackq delims==" %%i IN (`dir /b/ad`) do (

...

if "!localquote!"=="0" call :processDir %fullpath% %%i 1 %localFile% %5x

if "!localquote!"=="1" call :processDir "%fullpath%" "%%i" 1 %localFile% %5x

)

4. Next step is to process all files form current directory

FOR /F "usebackq delims==" %%i IN (`dir /b/a-d`) do (

...

if "!localquote!"=="0" (

echo ls %%i >> %localFile%

echo dele %%i >> %localFile%

echo put %fullpath%\%%i >> %localFile%

)

if "!localquote!"=="1" (

echo ls "%%i" >> %localFile%

echo dele "%%i" >> %localFile%

echo put "%fullpath%\%%i" >> %localFile%

)

)

The process is always trying to detect is the files are received with quotes or spaces within its name to make the proper handle, but, I haven’t fully test it for such cases.

Testing the script, let’s say we have the script and the desired directory to upload (web) in d:\temp, we execute it like this:

D:\Temp>uploadFiles.cmd Web

The screen output, in this case, is:

Processing .\Web\Administration

Processing .\Web\bin

Processing .\Web\Controls

Processing .\Web\HtmlTemp

Processing .\Web\Images

Processing .\Web\JS

Processing .\Web

Processing FTP

Having configured the script with these values:

set user=myUser

set pass=myPassword

set site=ftp.mySite.com

set base=/www/

set file=\command.ftp

The created commands file is:

user myUser myPassword

cd /www/

pwd

bin

hash

mkdir Administration

cd Administration

pwd

ls CountryAccess.aspx

dele CountryAccess.aspx

put .\Web\Administration\CountryAccess.aspx

ls CountryAccess.aspx.cs

dele CountryAccess.aspx.cs

put .\Web\Administration\CountryAccess.aspx.cs

ls CountryAccess.aspx.designer.cs

dele CountryAccess.aspx.designer.cs

put .\Web\Administration\CountryAccess.aspx.designer.cs

...

pwd

mkdir JS

cd JS

pwd

ls flash_detect.js

dele flash_detect.js

put .\Web\JS\flash_detect.js

ls GeneralFunctions.js

dele GeneralFunctions.js

put .\Web\JS\GeneralFunctions.js

cd ..

pwd

ls Web.config

dele Web.config

put .\Web\Web.config

cd ..

pwd

Here you can find a copy of the script in case you want to test it yourself: uploadFiles.zip