FTP question

Factual Questions
1

Can anyone explain to me how to use the command prompt (DOS) to ftp files off a website?

2

Well, for starters, you can’t do it off a web site, it has to be an FTP site. Then, assuming that DOS has a command-line FTP program (I know Linux does, and the Windows 2000/XP prompt does, but I never had a reason to FTP back in my DOS days), you’d generally type ‘ftp server.path’, follow the prompts for username and password, then type ‘?’ or ‘help’ for a list of commands, many of which are similar to standard command-line commands. ‘cd’ changes directory and so on.

IIRC, ‘retr remote.filename’ downloads/retrieves a file and ‘stor local.filename’ uploads/stores a file, but it’s also been quite a while since I’ve been without my WS_FTP.

3 

ftp myserver.com
cd /mydirectory/filelocation
bin (for binary files, or asc for text files, if the computers treat newlines differently)
get myfile.ext
get hisfile.ext
get herfile.ext
bye
4

Start your DOS command prompt, type “ftp”, and then type “?”. This will show you all the ftp commands. “? command” will show you specific help for that command.

Better yet, skip that, and download http://www.ftpx.com This is a Window’s Explorer Style FTP client.

Also, as Hauky said, you can’t grab stuff off an HTTP website with FTP. HTTP signifies a webserver. FTP, big surprise, needs an FTP server.

5

I wasn’t trying to actually get anything there. I was just wondering the syntax of the information. Thank you very much CurtC

6

Whoops, I meant I was. Since I am at work, my computer blocks ftp software but it usually bypasses it in a browser so it isn’t a problem. However, the browser wouldn’t load at home at all but it would load via an ftp client host. Weird, huh?

7

I didn’t notice you said “website.” Some websites allow FTP, others don’t. If it does, you should be able to login as user name “anonymous” and enter your email address as the password. If it doesn’t allow FTP, you just have to go through HTTP and your browser.

By the way, you can make your browser do FTP as well. Enter a URL like this:

ftp://anonymous:dorkus@website.com/folder

I’m not sure with this kind of a URL, how you’d enter the “@” sign as part of the password string (since it’s polite when doing an anonymous FTP to use your email address as the password), because it’s used to separate the user login from the site name.

8
  • The port # defaults to 21 if you don’t specify it, and the location only needs to be the URL. For access with no username/password you enter just:
    ftp://location:port#
    “location” being either a spelled-out domain name or a URL. IE will pop up a box asking for username and password if they’re needed, but I have found that Netscape and Mozilla don’t always seem to work right on this and with some FTP server software, they just show you an empty directory (?)… To “spell” your email address, you use [at] instead of @. For a client, I am partial to open source/freeware Filezilla.
    ~