list the files in a folder of SFTP server

Question

hi

My requirement is to get the incremental files that are available on the sftp server every day.  I am looking for a way to see all the file names in sftp server, so I can use a directory tool and compare it with the list of downloaded files, to get the list of new files to be downloaded. how do I make an API call for this?

Thanks in advance.

apathetichell · Answer

SFTP can mean two things:

1) authentication to a secure FTP server which uses encryption when transferring files via an SSH key. This is now supported natively by Alteryx in 2024.2 (I haven't tried it personally).

2) authentication to secure FTP server via traditional username/password -> which then transfers files to you via securely. In some cases this uses an authenticator helper (at least when I build them in AWS).

@anutakki67- which are you doing and which version of Alteryx are you using?

Ideally you'd execute ls (to list your files) on after logging in. You'd hit the root endpoint vs a specific file -> and you'd execute that. Is the download tool smart enough to do that if you add ls in your payload? maybe? The traditional way to do most of this stuff is via winscp via cli or python (Paramiko).

alexnajm · Answer

Thank you for reposting your second question from the other thread - tagging in @apathetichell and @Rhys_Cooper from the other thread for awareness

Can you share with us the documentation of the API from the SFTP site, ideally anything related to lists? It will all depend on what the API makes available for requests