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SOLVED

FTP multiple files without specifying the file name

VijethaSenigaram
6 - Meteoroid

Hi ,

Is it possible in Alteryx to FTP multiple files  from a Server without providing the name of the files ?

I have read through some of the posts that mentioned that wild card characters can not be used to achieve this.

In my  case , each has a unique name( filenames dont have any sequence pattern like file100, file200 etc, but different name altogether)   and there can be ~100 files to be FTPed everyday and we can not know their name . Is there an option to achieve FTP of files without providing their names in Alteryx?

4 REPLIES 4
MichalM
Alteryx
Alteryx

@VijethaSenigaram 

 

This will be a 2 step process

 

1. You will make a request to the home directory via the Download tool and extract information about all the files in the directory. You will be able to parse it out and choose which of them you actually want to extract based on name/size/creation date.

 

2. You will then use the file names to build out a unique FTP link for each of the 100+ files and feed them into another Download tool to get each of these downloaded.

 

Here's how.

VijethaSenigaram
6 - Meteoroid

HI,

Thankyou for your response, I have gone through the details on “How to” link  for  solving this issue.

 

On trying to extract the file information from the Server using the FTP tool  , the <html> code of the Server, file names, dates  details are captured under DownloadData column .

Is this because the Server is restricting details or any thing that I am missing from my end?

 

<html>
<head><title URL-name - /</title>
</head>
<body>
  <div class=header><H1 CLASS=cwd>URL-name - /</H1>
  </div><hr />
<FORM NAME="frmUpload" METHOD="POST" ACTION="/" ENCTYPE="multipart/form-data">
    <LABEL ACCESSKEY=U CLASS=filelabel>Upload a file to current folder:&nbsp;<INPUT TYPE="file" NAME="eftupload" CLASS=filefield/>
    </LABEL>
    <INPUT TYPE="submit" value="Upload" CLASS=submitbutton>
</FORM><hr />

<pre>
            11 Jul 2019    17:49         1293 <a href="/File-name</a><br>
</pre><hr>
<br /><br />
    <center><font face="arial" size="1" color=#3366CC><em>Powered by the <b>Globalscape EFT Server</b></em></font></center>
<br />
</body>
</html>

 

 

 

 

jamielaird
14 - Magnetar

Hi @VijethaSenigaram 

 

That's pretty much the format I'd expect the directory contents to come back in from an FTP. You'll just have to do a bit of filtering and parsing to get out a list of the filenames.

 

Cheers,

 

Jamie

MichalM
Alteryx
Alteryx

As @jamielaird suggested, this is expected. You will need to identify patterns in the HTML that will help you parse out the relevant information from the HTML - the file names. 

If you check this weekly challenge you will find loads of useful pointers on how to approach this problem.

 

Once you have these, it should be quite straight forward. 

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