using python ftp

[Stefan Schwarzer]

Hello Matt,

On 2010-12-23 01:03, Matt Funk wrote:
> i was wondering whether someone can point me whether the following
> already exists.
> 
> I want to connect to a server , download various files (for whose name i
> want to be able to use a wildcard), and store those files in a given
> location on the hard drive. If the file already exists i do not want to
> download it.
> [...]

You might want to check out ftputil:

http://ftputil.sschwarzer.net/
http://ftputil.sschwarzer.net/trac/wiki/Documentation

> Otherwise i was going to do it "by hand" using ftplib:
> 1) connect to server,
> 2) change to directory on server
> 3) get listing
> 4) match the file pattern i want to the listing
> 5) check if file already exists
> 6) download file if matched and doesn't exist
> 
> Can anyone offer any advice whether this already done somewhere?

ftputil will do most of these tasks easily. For step 4
you probably want to use Python's fnmatch module, see
http://docs.python.org/library/fnmatch.html .

If you have questions on ftputil, there's also a
mailing list:
http://ftputil.sschwarzer.net/trac/wiki/MailingList
(You need to be subscribed to the list to post, though.)

Stefan