Using FTP inside PHP – Part 2

In the first part of this tutorial we have seen how to connect to FTP using PHP, upload a file and list the content from a specified directory.

In the second part we will cover the following :

1. how to copy files from the FTP server using PHP.
2. how to create a new directory on FTP server.
3. transfer just a part of a file.
4. other functions useful for FTP.

For copying a file from the FTP server we can use ftp_get(conn_id, client, file, transfer_type). Is similar with ftp_put().

<?php // data for FTP connection $ftp_server = 'ftp.mywebsite.net'; $ftp_user = 'user'; $ftp_pass = 'passwd'; $conn_id = ftp_connect($ftp_server); $login_result = ftp_login($conn_id, $ftp_user, $ftp_pass); if ((!$conn_id) || (!$login_result)) { echo "Connection failed."; exit; } else { $file = 'test.txt'; $server = '/www/'. $file; $client = 'c:/download/'. $file; if (ftp_get($conn_id, $client, $server, FTP_BINARY)) echo "The file $file was downloaded"; else echo "Error, the file $file could not be downloaded"; } ftp_close($conn_id); ?>

If there exists another file with the same name on client side, will be overwritten.

We can make a new directory on FTP server using ftp_mkdir(conn_id, dir_name). For deleting the directory we can use ftp_rmdir(conn_id, dir_name). Note that PHP must have write access on the server.

<?php $ftp_server = 'ftp.mywebsite.net'; $ftp_user = 'user'; $ftp_pass = 'passwd'; $conn_id = ftp_connect($ftp_server); $login_result = ftp_login($conn_id, $ftp_user, $ftp_pass); if ((!$conn_id) || (!$login_result)) { echo "Connection failed."; exit; } else { $dir = 'newdir'; // the name of the new directory that will be created // if directory is set to "www/" if(ftp_chdir($conn_id, '/www/')) { if (ftp_mkdir($conn_id, $dir)) echo "The directory $dir has been crerated"; else echo "Error, the directory $dir could be created"; } } ftp_close($conn_id); ?>

PHP offers the possibility to transfer just a part of the file. We can do this using ftp_fput(conn_id, destionation, file_pointer, transfer_type).
file_pointer – is the pointer of the file opened with fopen(). It retains the content of this file from this pointer to the end of the file.

<?php $file = "test.txt"; // the file that will be open for reading if ($fp = fopen($file, rb)) { fseek($fp, 50); // set the position of the pointer inside the file $ftp_server = 'ftp.mywebsite.net'; $ftp_user = 'user'; $ftp_pass = 'passwd'; $conn_id = ftp_connect($ftp_server); $login_result = ftp_login($conn_id, $ftp_user, $ftp_pass); if ((!$conn_id) || (!$login_result)) { echo "Connection failed."; exit; } else { $destionation = '/www/test2.txt'; // the dir and file name if (ftp_fput($conn_id, $destination, $fp, FTP_BINARY)) echo 'The content has been transfered'; else echo 'The content could no be transfered'; } ftp_close($conn_id); // free the memory used for opening the file. fclose($fp); } ?>

Other functions for FTP inside PHP:

a) ftp_cdup(conn_id) changes the current directory to the main directory.
b) ftp_chmod(conn_id, octal_CHMOD, file) – change the rights of a file.
c) ftp_pwd(conn_id) – returns the current working directory.
d) ftp_rename(conn_id, current_name, new_name) – renames the file or the directory.
e) ftp_size (conn_id, file) – returns the size in bytes of the file; Note: some servers do no support this function.

That’s it! I hope you liked this PHP tutorial that showed you how to use FTP functions inside PHP.