FTP/SFTP/FTPS Component
This component provides access to remote file systems over the FTP and SFTP protocols.
Maven users will need to add the following dependency to their pom.xml for this component:
See File for more options as all the options from File is inherited.
Absolute path is not supported.
Camel 2.16 will translate absolute paths to relative ones by trimming all leading slashes from directoryname. There'll be WARN message printed in the logs.
Make sure you read the section titled Default when consuming files further below for details related to consuming files.
URI format
Where directoryname represents the underlying directory. The directory name is a relative path. Absolute paths are not supported. The relative path can contain nested folders, such as /inbox/us.
For Camel versions before Camel 2.16, the directoryName must exist already as this component does not support the autoCreate option (which the file component does). The reason is that its the FTP administrator (FTP server) task to properly setup user accounts, and home directories with the right file permissions etc.
For Camel 2.16, autoCreate option is supported. When consumer starts, before polling is scheduled, there's additional FTP operation performed to create the directory configured for endpoint. The default value for autoCreate is true.
If no username is provided, then anonymous login is attempted using no password.
If no port number is provided, Camel will provide default values according to the protocol (ftp = 21, sftp = 22, ftps = 2222).
You can append query options to the URI in the following format, ?option=value&option=value&...
This component uses two different libraries for the actual FTP work. FTP and FTPS uses Apache Commons Net while SFTP uses JCraft JSCH.
The FTPS component is only available in Camel 2.2 or newer.
FTPS (also known as FTP Secure) is an extension to FTP that adds support for the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) cryptographic protocols.
URI Options
The options below are exclusive for the FTP component.
See File for more options as all the options from File is inherited.
Name | Default Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
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| Specifies the username to use to log in to the remote file systen. |
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| Specifies the password to use to log in to the remote file system. |
| null | Camel 2.15.2: Specified the account to use to login to the remote FTP server (only for FTP and FTP Secure) |
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| Specifies the file transfer mode, BINARY or ASCII. Default is ASCII ( |
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| Camel 2.2: Whether or not to disconnect from remote FTP server right after use. Can be used for both consumer and producer. Disconnect will only disconnect the current connection to the FTP server. If you have a consumer which you want to stop, then you need to stop the consumer/route instead. |
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| When consuming, a local work directory can be used to store the remote file content directly in local files, to avoid loading the content into memory. This is beneficial, if you consume a very big remote file and thus can conserve memory. See below for more details. |
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| FTP and FTPS only: Specifies whether to use passive mode connections. Default is active mode ( |
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| FTPS only: Sets the underlying security protocol. The following values are defined: |
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| Camel 2.4: FTPS only: Whether or not to disable using default values for |
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| Camel 2.11: Whether the FTP consumer should download the file. If this option is set to |
streamDownload | false | Camel 2.11: Whether the consumer should download the entire file up front, the default behavior, or if it should pass an InputStream read from the remote resource rather than an in-memory array as the in body of the Camel Exchange. This option is ignored if download is false or is localWorkDirectory is provided. This option is useful for working with large remote files. |
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| Camel 2.4: FTPS only: Will by default use option |
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| Camel 2.4: FTPS only: This option specifies the buffer size of the secure data channel. If option |
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| FTPS only: Sets the security mode(implicit/explicit). Default is explicit ( |
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| SFTP only: Sets the |
useUserKnownHostsFile | true | SFTP onlly: Camel 2.18: If knownHostFile has not been explicit configured then use the host file from System.getProperty(user.home)/.ssh/known_hosts |
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| SFTP only: Camel 2.11.1: Sets the |
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| SFTP only: Camel 2.12.0: Sets the Java KeyPair for SSH public key authentication, it supports DSA or RSA keys. |
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| SFTP only: Set the private key file to that the SFTP endpoint can do private key verification. |
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| SFTP only: Camel 2.11.1: Set the private key file (loaded from classpath by default) to that the SFTP endpoint can do private key verification. |
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| SFTP only: Camel 2.11.1: Set the private key as byte[] to that the SFTP endpoint can do private key verification. |
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| SFTP only: Deprecated: use |
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| SFTP only: Camel 2.11.1: Set the private key file passphrase to that the SFTP endpoint can do private key verification. |
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| SFTP only: Camel 2.10.7, 2.11.2,2.12.0: set the preferred authentications which SFTP endpoint will used. Some example include:password,publickey. If not specified the default list from JSCH will be used. |
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| Camel 2.8.2, 2.9: SFTP only Set a comma separated list of ciphers that will be used in order of preference. Possible cipher names are defined by JCraft JSCH. Some examples include: aes128-ctr,aes128-cbc,3des-ctr,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc. If not specified the default list from JSCH will be used. |
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| Camel 2.8.2, 2.9: If set this option to be true, camel-ftp will use the list file directly to check if the file exists. Since some FTP server may not support to list the file directly, if the option is false, camel-ftp will use the old way to list the directory and check if the file exists. Note from Camel 2.10.1 onwards this option also influences |
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| SFTP only: Camel 2.2: Sets whether to use strict host key checking. Possible values are: |
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| Specifies the maximum reconnect attempts Camel performs when it tries to connect to the remote FTP server. Use 0 to disable this behavior. |
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| Delay in millis Camel will wait before performing a reconnect attempt. |
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| Camel 2.4: Is the connect timeout in millis. This corresponds to using |
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| FTP and FTPS Only: Camel 2.4: Is the Also SFTP from Camel 2.14.3/2.15.3/2.16 onwards. From Camel 2.16 onwards the default is 300000 (300 sec). |
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| FTP and FTPS Only: Camel 2.4: Is the data timeout in millis. This corresponds to using |
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| Camel 2.5: Whether or not to thrown an exception if a successful connection and login could not be establish. This allows a custom |
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| FTP and FTPS Only: Camel 2.5: To execute site commands after successful login. Multiple site commands can be separated using a new line character (\n). Use |
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| Camel 2.6: Whether or not stepwise traversing directories should be used or not. Stepwise means that it will CD one directory at a time. See more details below. You can disable this in case you can't use this approach. |
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| Camel 2.6: Dictates what path separator char to use when uploading files. Since Camel 2.15.2: The default value is changed to UNIX style path, before Camel 2.15.2: The default value is |
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| SFTP Producer Only: Camel 2.9: Allows you to set chmod on the stored file. For example |
| 0 | SFTP Only: Camel 2.8.3/2.9: To use compression. Specify a level from 1 to 10. Important: You must manually add the needed JSCH zlib JAR to the classpath for compression support. |
| 32768 | FTP/FTPS Only: Camel 2.15.1: The buffer size for downloading files. The default size is 32kb. |
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| FTP and FTPS Only: Camel 2.1: Allows you to use a custom |
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| FTP and FTPS Only: Camel 2.1: Allows you to use a custom |
ftpClientConfig.XXX | FTP and FTPS Only: To configure various options on the FTPClient instance from the uri. For example: ftpClientConfig.receiveDataSocketBufferSize=8192&ftpClientConfig.sendDataSocketBufferSize=8192 | |
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| SFTP Only: Camel 2.8 Allows you to set the serverAliveInterval of the sftp session |
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| SFTP Only: Camel 2.8 Allows you to set the serverAliveCountMax of the sftp session |
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| FTPS Only: Sets the trust store file, so that the FTPS client can look up for trusted certificates. |
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| FTPS Only: Sets the trust store type. |
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| FTPS Only: Sets the trust store algorithm. |
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| FTPS Only: Sets the trust store password. |
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| FTPS Only: Sets the key store file, so that the FTPS client can look up for the private certificate. |
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| FTPS Only: Sets the key store type. |
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| FTPS Only: Sets the key store algorithm. |
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| FTPS Only: Sets the key store password. |
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| FTPS Only: Sets the private key password. |
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| FTPS Only: Camel 2.9: Reference to a |
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| SFTP Only: Camel 2.10.7, 2.11.1: Reference to a |
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| FTP/FTPS Only: Camel 2.12.1: Whether the consumer should use FTP LIST command to retrieve directory listing to see which files exists. If this option is set to |
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| Camel 2.12.1: Whether the consumer should ignore when a file was attempted to be retrieved but did not exist (for some reason), or failure due insufficient file permission error. Camel 2.14.2: This option now applies to directories as well. |
sendNoop | true | Camel 2.16: Producer only. Whether to send a noop command as a pre-write check before uploading files to the FTP server. This is enabled by default as a validation of the connection is still valid, which allows to silently re-connect to be able to upload the file. However if this causes problems, you can turn this option off. |
jschLoggingLevel | WARN | SFTP Only: Camel 2.15.3/2.16: The logging level to use for JSCH activity logging. As JSCH is verbose at by default at INFO level the threshold is WARN by default. |
bulkRequest | SFTP Only: Camel 2.17.1: Specifies how many requests may be outstanding at any one time. Increasing this value may slightly improve file transfer speed but will increase memory usage. | |
disconnectOnBatchComplete | false | Camel 2.18: Whether or not to disconnect from remote FTP server after a Batch is complete. Can be used for both consumer and producer. Disconnect will only disconnect the current connection to the FTP server. If you have a consumer which you want to stop, then you need to stop the consumer/route instead. |
activePortRange | Camel 2.18: Set the client side port range in active mode. The syntax is: minPort-maxPort. Both port numbers are inclusive, eg 10000-19999 to include all 1xxxx ports. |
When using the ftpClient. properties related to SSL with the FTPS component, the trust store accepts all certificates. If you only want trust selective certificates, you have to configure the trust store with the ftpClient.trustStore.xxx options or by configuring a custom ftpClient.
When using sslContextParameters, the trust store is managed by the configuration of the provided SSLContextParameters instance.
You can configure additional options on the ftpClient and ftpClientConfig from the URI directly by using the ftpClient. or ftpClientConfig. prefix.
For example to set the setDataTimeout on the FTPClient to 30 seconds you can do:
You can mix and match and have use both prefixes, for example to configure date format or timezones.
You can have as many of these options as you like.
See the documentation of the Apache Commons FTP FTPClientConfig for possible options and more details. And as well for Apache Commons FTP FTPClient.
If you do not like having many and long configuration in the url you can refer to the ftpClient or ftpClientConfig to use by letting Camel lookup in the Registry for it.
For example:
And then let Camel lookup this bean when you use the # notation in the url.
More URI options
See File2 as all the options there also applies for this component.
Examples
ftp://someone@someftpserver.com/public/upload/images/holiday2008?password=secret&binary=true
ftp://someoneelse@someotherftpserver.co.uk:12049/reports/2008/password=secret&binary=false
ftp://publicftpserver.com/download
The FTP consumer (with the same endpoint) does not support concurrency (the backing FTP client is not thread safe).
You can use multiple FTP consumers to poll from different endpoints. It is only a single endpoint that does not support concurrent consumers.
The FTP producer does not have this issue, it supports concurrency.
This component is an extension of the File component. So there are more samples and details on the File component page.
Default when consuming files
The FTP consumer will by default leave the consumed files untouched on the remote FTP server. You have to configure it explicitly if you want it to delete the files or move them to another location. For example you can use delete=true to delete the files, or use move=.done to move the files into a hidden done sub directory.
The regular File consumer is different as it will by default move files to a .camel sub directory. The reason Camel does not do this by default for the FTP consumer is that it may lack permissions by default to be able to move or delete files.
limitations
The option readLock can be used to force Camel not to consume files that are currently being written. However, this option is turned off by default, as it requires that the user has write access. See the options table at File2 for more details about read locks.
There are other solutions to avoid consuming files that are currently being written over FTP; for instance, you can write to a temporary destination and move the file after it has been written.
When moving files using move or preMove option the files are restricted to the FTP_ROOT folder. That prevents you from moving files outside the FTP area. If you want to move files to another area you can use soft links and move files into a soft linked folder.
Message Headers
The following message headers can be used to affect the behavior of the component
Header | Description |
|---|---|
| Specifies the output file name (relative to the endpoint directory) to be used for the output message when sending to the endpoint. If this is not present and no expression either, then a generated message ID is used as the filename instead. |
| The actual filepath (path + name) for the output file that was written. This header is set by Camel and its purpose is providing end-users the name of the file that was written. |
| Current index out of total number of files being consumed in this batch. |
| Total number of files being consumed in this batch. |
| The remote hostname. |
| Path to the local work file, if local work directory is used. |
In addition the FTP/FTPS consumer and producer will enrich the Camel Message with the following headers
Header | Description |
|---|---|
| Camel 2.11.1: The FTP client reply code (the type is a integer) |
| Camel 2.11.1: The FTP client reply string |
About timeouts
The two set of libraries (see top) have different APIs for setting timeout. You can use the connectTimeout option for both of them to set a timeout in millis to establish a network connection. An individual soTimeout can also be set on the FTP/FTPS, which corresponds to using ftpClient.soTimeout. Notice SFTP will automatically use connectTimeout as its soTimeout. The timeout option only applies for FTP/FTSP as the data timeout, which corresponds to the ftpClient.dataTimeout value. All timeout values are in millis.
Using Local Work Directory
Camel supports consuming from remote FTP servers and downloading the files directly into a local work directory. This avoids reading the entire remote file content into memory as it is streamed directly into the local file using FileOutputStream.
Camel will store to a local file with the same name as the remote file, though with .inprogress as extension while the file is being downloaded. Afterwards, the file is renamed to remove the .inprogress suffix. And finally, when the Exchange is complete the local file is deleted.
So if you want to download files from a remote FTP server and store it as files then you need to route to a file endpoint such as:
The route above is ultra efficient as it avoids reading the entire file content into memory. It will download the remote file directly to a local file stream. The java.io.File handle is then used as the Exchange body. The file producer leverages this fact and can work directly on the work file java.io.File handle and perform a java.io.File.rename to the target filename. As Camel knows it's a local work file, it can optimize and use a rename instead of a file copy, as the work file is meant to be deleted anyway.
Stepwise changing directories
Camel FTP can operate in two modes in terms of traversing directories when consuming files (eg downloading) or producing files (eg uploading)
- stepwise
- not stepwise
You may want to pick either one depending on your situation and security issues. Some Camel end users can only download files if they use stepwise, while others can only download if they do not. At least you have the choice to pick (from Camel 2.6 onwards).
In Camel 2.0 - 2.5 there is only one mode and it is:
- before 2.5 not stepwise
- 2.5 stepwise
From Camel 2.6 onwards there is now an option stepwise you can use to control the behavior.
Note that stepwise changing of directory will in most cases only work when the user is confined to it's home directory and when the home directory is reported as "/".
The difference between the two of them is best illustrated with an example. Suppose we have the following directory structure on the remote FTP server we need to traverse and download files:
And that we have a file in each of sub-a (a.txt) and sub-b (b.txt) folder.
Using stepwise=true (default mode)
As you can see when stepwise is enabled, it will traverse the directory structure using CD xxx.
Using stepwise=false
As you can see when not using stepwise, there are no CD operation invoked at all.
Samples
In the sample below we set up Camel to download all the reports from the FTP server once every hour (60 min) as BINARY content and store it as files on the local file system.
Consuming a remote FTPS server (implicit SSL) and client authentication
Consuming a remote FTPS server (explicit TLS) and a custom trust store configuration
Filter using org.apache.camel.component.file.GenericFileFilter
Camel supports pluggable filtering strategies. This strategy can be provided by implementing org.apache.camel.component.file.GenericFileFilter in Java. You can then configure the endpoint with such a filter to skip certain filters before being processed.
In the sample we have built our own filter that only accepts files starting with report in the filename.# notation) that we have defined in the spring XML file:
Filtering using ANT path matcher
The ANT path matcher is a filter that is shipped out-of-the-box in the camel-spring jar. So you need to depend on camel-spring if you are using Maven.
The reason is that we leverage Spring's AntPathMatcher to do the actual matching.
The file paths are matched with the following rules:
?matches one character*matches zero or more characters**matches zero or more directories in a path
The sample below demonstrates how to use it:
Using a proxy with SFTP
To use an HTTP proxy to connect to your remote host, you can configure your route in the following way:
You can also assign a user name and password to the proxy, if necessary. Please consult the documentation for com.jcraft.jsch.Proxy to discover all options.
Setting preferred SFTP authentication method
If you want to explicitly specify the list of authentication methods that should be used by sftp component, use preferredAuthentications option. If for example you would like Camel to attempt to authenticate with private/public SSH key and fallback to user/password authentication in the case when no public key is available, use the following route configuration:
Consuming a single file using a fixed name
When you want to download a single file and know the file name, you can use fileName=myFileName.txt to tell Camel the name of the file to download. By default the consumer will still do a FTP LIST command to do a directory listing and then filter these files based on the fileName option. Though in this use-case it may be desirable to turn off the directory listing by setting useList=false. For example the user account used to login to the FTP server may not have permission to do a FTP LIST command. So you can turn off this with useList=false, and then provide the fixed name of the file to download with fileName=myFileName.txt, then the FTP consumer can still download the file. If the file for some reason does not exist, then Camel will by default throw an exception, you can turn this off and ignore this by setting ignoreFileNotFoundOrPermissionError=true.
For example to have a Camel route that picks up a single file, and deletes it after use you can write
Notice that we have used all the options we talked above.
You can also use this with ConsumerTemplate. For example to download a single file (if it exists) and grab the file content as a String type:
Debug logging
This component has log level TRACE that can be helpful if you have problems.