How to download a file via FTP with Python ftplib

user_1373033 0
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I have the following code which easily connects to the FTP server and opens a zip file. I want to download that file into the local system. How to do that?

# Open the file for writing in binary mode
print 'Opening local file ' + filename
file = open(filename, 'wb')

# Download the file a chunk at a time
# Each chunk is sent to handleDownload
# We append the chunk to the file and then print a '.' for progress
# RETR is an FTP command

print 'Getting ' + filename
ftp.retrbinary('RETR ' + filename, handleDownload)

# Clean up time
print 'Closing file ' + filename
file.close()
ftplib ftp python
7 Answers
FILENAME = 'StarWars.avi'    

with ftplib.FTP(FTP_IP, FTP_LOGIN, FTP_PASSWD) as ftp:
    ftp.cwd('movies')
    with open(FILENAME, 'wb') as f:
        ftp.retrbinary('RETR ' + FILENAME, f.write)

Of course it would we be wise to handle possible errors.

user_13089270

Please note if you are downloading from the FTP to your local, you will need to use the following: 

with open( filename, 'wb' ) as file :
        ftp.retrbinary('RETR %s' % filename, file.write)

Otherwise, the script will at your local file storage rather than the FTP.

I spent a few hours making the mistake myself.

Script below:

import ftplib

# Open the FTP connection
ftp = ftplib.FTP()
ftp.cwd('/where/files-are/located')


filenames = ftp.nlst()

for filename in filenames:

    with open( filename, 'wb' ) as file :
        ftp.retrbinary('RETR %s' % filename, file.write)

        file.close()

ftp.quit()
user_12566370

If you are not limited to using ftplib you can also give wget module a try. Here, is the snippet

import wget
file_loc = 'http://www.website.com/foo.zip'
wget.download(file_loc)
user_44108830
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