Download from SFTP

Caleb

All,

I'm trying to determine if Alteryx can download files from an SFTP site. 

I've been searching the community and I came across this for download from FTP: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Knowledge-Base/File-Transfer-Protocol-FTP-Download/ta-p/10599

Can I use this setup for SFTP as well? If not, is there a way to download from SFTP using Alteryx?

Lastly, if it is possible, can pull all files in the directory using \*.csv (as can be done with the Directory tool) or is a specific path required?

I saw a thread from 2015 talking about inability to upload to SFTP, not sure if that also meant download was also not possible at the time of writing.

Thank you in advance!

hda_wesleyjwk

Hi Caleb,

I have several flows that include downloading from SFTP using Alteryx. As always, many ways lead to Rome, so I'll show you my way.

First thing I do is set up a Text Input with the SFTP URL Folder I would like to download from.

Next I add a download tool, select the URL, encode the URL text, and output to a string field. In the connection I enter my credentials (username, password).

Afterwords I add a RegEx tool with Tokenize. I assume the files you are trying to download from the SFTP have some kind of consistent naming conventions or format that you could use to built a RegEx expression with to Tokenize them and split them to rows.

After this; given your requirements to look only for .csv's, you could add a filter that looks at rows that contain .csv and filter them out. Subsequently you could add back the SFTP URL with a formula that concatenates the SFTP URL and the filename you got from the RegEx expression. You could also add a output_to_url here which specifies the local folder you would like to download to (incl. the filename and extension).

This list of filenames and output_to_url's  you could input into a new download tool with the same set-up and credentials, only now you select that you want to write the output to a file from field "output_to_url".

Executing this workflow will retrieve all specified .csv's and download them to the folder specified by you.

Any more questions, just reply back.