Very Computer

Can someone suggest an FTP client that can accomplish the tasks I've
described below?  I have searched high and low for one but have been
unsuccessful in finding one that is both reliable and offers all the
features I need.  I am amazed that there are not zillions of FTP clients
out there that can do the tasks below...

Here's what I have and what I need to do:

Our Web site resides in a directory on a Unix Web server that is
maintained by our Center for Academic Computing.  We have the ability to
FTP in and out of our directory, but we have no control over any aspects
of the Web server itself.  We cannot telnet in, schedule cron jobs, load
CGI scripts, or anything like that; we are basically renting space.

Our Web site "development area" is a directory on our local office
Novell NetWare 4.0 file server.  The directory structure is an exact
duplicate of the structure on our actual Web site.  We create and edit
our Web site files in this local directory (in a Windows 95/NT
environment) and then FTP the whole thing over to the Unix Web server
each night, or whenever needed.  I do this FTPing manually using WS_FTP.

WS_FTP is a great client for manual FTP jobs.  However, I would really
like to automate the FTP process, and WS_FTP can't do everything I need
it to do.  I have tried File Dog but had a lot of difficulty connecting
to the Web server, and found the interface somewhat cumbersome.  So, I
need a reliable, easy-to-use FTP client that can do the following:

1) *Automatically* log into the Unix Web server each night and FTP
everything from our local "development area" directory to our Unix Web
server directory.  (I can schedule a batch file to run on our local file
server if I need to, so the FTP client doesn't necessarily need to have
a built-in scheduler.)  Ideally, I would like to be able to mirror the
two directories, i.e., get rid of outdated documents as well as add new
ones and update existing ones.

2) During the FTP transfer, everything in our "development area"
directory, *including new and existing subdirectories*, must get FTPed.
Many packages I've seen (WS_FTP included) can't automatically create new
subdirectories on-the-fly when run from the command line.

3)  All file names must end up in *lower-case* on the Unix Web server.
I have found that some FTP clients convert the file names to ALL
UPPERCASE during the transfer.  Since Unix is case-sensitive, this is
unacceptable.  Certain packages such as WS_FTP have a "Force Lowercase"
option that takes care of this problem.

4) *Long file names must be preserved.* Some packages can't handle
".html" extensions and files end up as ".htm" on the Unix Web server.
This is clearly unacceptable.  Again, though, certain packages such as
WS_FTP have a "convert extensions" option that make sure this does not
happen, even if the user named the file ".htm" instead of ".html".

5) Ideally, the FTP client should be able to send e-mail to me if the
FTP job did not run correctly.  For instance, the client could not
connect to the Unix Web server, files or directories could not be found,
invalid password, etc.

Any suggestions from anyone?

Jim West
Senior Applications Programmer/Analyst
Office of the University Registrar
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA  16802

[Posted and Mailed]

If you've got NT workstations around, you'd be hard pressed to find a better
solution for your needs than Gurusamy Sarathay's port of Perl 5.004. It
includes Graham Barr's Net::FTP module as well as a LOT of other stuff, and can
do everything you require (assuming, of course, that you're willing to write
some Perl code). One of your requirements was "easy to use", though . . . did
you mean for the developer or the end-user? ;-)

In volume 1, issue 3 of "The Perl Journal" is an article on using the FTP
module to, among other things, mirror a directory structure between hosts.
Adding a feature to provide Email notification in the event of
successful/failed transfer is a trivial exercise; the Net::SMTP module is
included in Sarathay's distribution as well.

You can find it at:

http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local/ports/winNT/Gurusamy_Sarathy/perl5.004...

The source code from The Perl Journal can be found at:

http://orwant.www.media.mit.edu/tpj/programs/Issue_3_FTP/

You may also be able to just create a batch cmd file that with
a modified netrc.ini will configure ftp to do its business
automatically.

Craig