Automating FTP with shell scripts [classic]

People frequently need to automate FTP sessions to upload or download files.
Most command line FTP clients, including the FTP client on the Mac, can automatically login to an FTP server by reading the .netrc file in the user home directory. Note that the FTP auto-login file starts with a dot in front of the name (dot netrc).

Syntax of the $HOME/.netrc

The .netrc file can contain more than one auto-login configuration. Each FTP server has a set of commands, the minimum being the login name and password. You can create as many machine sections as you need. Here is a generic example:

machine ftp.server.com
  login myuserID
  password mypassword

Very Important: .netrc permissions!
Since user IDs and passwords are stored in the .netrc file, the FTP client enforces permission checking on it. It must be set so that no groups and no other users can read or write to it. You can set the permissions on it with this command from the Terminal (from your home directory) once the file is created:
chmod 700 .netrc

Adding FTP commands in a BASH script
You can embed FTP commands in a BASH script to upload and download files.
For example, you could create a script file named ftpupload.sh:

#!/bin/bash
# upload a file
/usr/bin/ftp -i ftp.server.com <<ENDOFCOMMANDS
cd backupdir
cd subdir
put datafile
quit
ENDOFCOMMANDS

In this example, I added the -i switch when running FTP to prevent it from prompting on multiple file uploads/downloads, even though it is only uploading one file in the example. I also use the BASH HERE document feature to send commands to FTP. When the script is run, it will auto-login using the information in the .netrc file, change to the right remote directory and upload the datafile.

Scheduling the script with Cron
The last step is to get the BASH script to run unattended, say every day at 5:00 am. The old school UNIX way is to use Cron, but the fancy new Apple way is to use a launchd XML configuration. As long as cron is supported in OS X, I'll stick to the old school way. I leave the launchd configuration as an exercise for the reader.

Add these lines with the command "crontab -e", then save:

# automated FTP upload
0 5 * * * /Users/username/ftpupload.sh