FTP

FTP/SFTP Component

This component provides access to remote file systems over the FTP and SFTP protocols.

URI format

ftp://[username@]hostname[:port]/filename[?options]
sftp://[username@]hostname[:port]/filename[?options]

Where filename represents the underlying file name or directory. Can contain nested folders.
The username is currently only possible to provide in the hostname parameter.

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).

You can append query options to the URI in the following format, ?option=value&option=value&...

URI Options

Examples

ftp://someone@someftpserver.com/public/upload/images/holiday2008?password=secret&binary=true
ftp://someoneelse@someotherftpserver.co.uk:12049/reports/2008/budget.txt?password=secret&binary=false&directory=false
ftp://publicftpserver.com/download

New default behavior for FTP/SFTP-Consumers in Camel 1.5

The consumer will always skip any file which name starts with a dot, such as ".", ".camel", ".m2" or ".groovy". Only files (not directories) is matched for valid filename if options such as: consumer.regexPattern, consumer.excludeNamePrefix, consumer.excludeNamePostfix is used.

The consumer recursive option will be changed from true to false as the default value. We don't feel that Camel out-of-the-box should recursive poll.

The consumer will not use timestamp algorithm for determine if a remote file is a new file - see warning section above. To use the old behavior of Camel 1.4 or older you can use the option consumer.timestamp=true.

Exclusive Read Lock

The option readLock can be used to force Camel not to consume files that is currently in the progress of being written. However this option is default turned off, as it requires that the user has write access. There are other solutions to avoid consuming files that are currently being written over FTP, for instance you can write the a temporary destination and move the file after it has been written.

Message Headers

The following message headers can be used to affect the behavior of the component

Consumer properties

When using FTPConsumer (downloading files from a FTP Server) the consumer specific properties from the [File] component should be prefixed with "consumer.". For example the delay option from File Component should be specified as "consumer.delay=30000" in the URI. See the samples or some of the unit tests of this component.

Filename Expression

In Camel 1.5 we have support for setting the filename using an expression. This can be set either using the expression option or as a string based File Language expression in the org.apache.camel.file.name header. See the File Language for some samples.

Camel 1.x Known issues

See the timestamp warning.

When consuming files (downloading) you must use type conversation to either String or to InputStream for ASCII and BINARY file types.
In Camel 1.4 this is fixed, as there are build in type converters for the ASCII and BINARY file types, meaning that you do not need the convertBodyTo expression.

In Camel 1.4 or below Camel FTPConsumer will poll files regardless if the file is currently being written. See the consumer.exclusiveReadLock option.

Also in Camel 1.3 since setNames is default false then you must explicitly set the filename using the setHeader expression when consuming from FTP directly to File.
The code below illustrates this:

private String ftpUrl = "ftp://camelrider@localhost:21/public/downloads?password=admin&binary=false";
private String fileUrl = "file:myfolder/?append=false&noop=true";

return new RouteBuilder() {
    public void configure() throws Exception {
        from(ftpUrl).setHeader(FileComponent.HEADER_FILE_NAME, constant("downloaded.txt")).convertBodyTo(String.class).to(fileUrl);
    }
};

Or you can set the option to true as illustrated below:

private String ftpUrl = "ftp://camelrider@localhost:21/public/downloads?password=admin&binary=false&consumer.setNames=true";
private String fileUrl = "file:myfolder/?append=false&noop=true";

return new RouteBuilder() {
    public void configure() throws Exception {
        from(ftpUrl).convertBodyTo(String.class).to(fileUrl);
    }
};

Sample

In the sample below we setup 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.

And the route using Spring DSL:

  <route>
     <from uri="ftp://scott@localhost/public/reports?password=tiger&amp;binary=true&amp;consumer.delay=60000"/>
     <to uri="file://target/test-reports"/>
  </route>

Using expression for filenames

In this sample we want to move consumed files to a backup folder using today's date as a sub foldername. Notice that the move happens on the remote FTP server. If you want to store the downloaded file on your local disk then route it to the [File] component as the sample above illustrates.

from(ftpUrl + "&expression=backup/${date:now:yyyyMMdd}/${file:name}").to("...");

See File Language for more samples.

Consuming a remote FTP server triggered by a route

The FTP consumer is build as a scheduled consumer to be used in the from route. However if you want to start consuming from a FTP server triggered within a route it's a bit cumbersome to do this in Camel 1.x (we plan to improve this in Camel 2.x). However it's possible as this code below demonstrates.

In the sample we have a SEDA queue where a message arrives that holds a message containing a filename to poll from a remote FTP server. So we setup a basic FTP url as:

And then we have the route where we use Processor within the route so we can use Java code. In this Java code we create the ftp consumer that downloads the file we want. And after the download we can get the content of the file and put it in the original exchange that continues being routed. As this is based on an unit test it routes to a Mock endpoint.

Debug logging

This component has log level TRACE that can be helpful if you have problems.

See Also

• Configuring Camel
• Component
• Endpoint
• Getting Started