Android Question Problems with FTP

[techgreyeye]

I have written a B4A app and corresponding vb.net windows application to communicate via an FTP server. I've tested this on 3 different FTP servers and all works well as expected. I signed up for hosting via a new ISP as the old one didn't allow multiple FTP accounts, and have started having problems.

When I try to get a file list (as below), Success is true, but the folders and files arrays are empty.

myftp.Initialize("myftp", cfg.address, cfg.port, cfg.username, cfg.password)
myftp.List(full_startfolder & "/to_handheld")
Wait For myftp_ListCompleted (ServerPath As String, Success As Boolean, Folders() As FTPEntry, Files() As FTPEntry)


The folders on the ftp server are:
/

data_in

15
16​

data_out

15
16​

When I try in the windows application, the stream returned from the FTP server is as I would expect when listing the root folder

.
..
data_in
data_out

but if I specify the data_in folder, the data returned is

data_in/15
data_in/16

On the other FTP servers, this would return
.
..
15
16

It seems that this FTP server is returning text data in a different format to other servers.

I tried directly send the "DIR" and "NLST" ftp commands in B4A using FTP.SendCommand, but they fail with no reply code or reply string being returned.

I'm a bit stuck as to how I make progress with this. Am I even allowed to use FTP.SendCommand like this? Is there any way of changing the parsing of the text returned from the FTP server so I can make FTP.List work? I hope someone can help


Thanks,
Darren

 

[Erel]

Is there any way of changing the parsing of the text returned from the FTP server so I can make FTP.List work?

Currently no. As this is your own server can't you try it with a different FTP server?

 

[techgreyeye]

Thanks for the reply Erel.

I'd need to check with the hosting company, but it's a cheap shared hosting so I doubt I could replace the FTP server (ProFTPD).

The other thing is if once I've called myftp.List, is there anyway of accessing the raw response from the server?

Thanks again

 

[techgreyeye]

Done a bit more digging, and I think there is on option in the FTP server configuration to stop the returned filenames coming back as <folder>/<filename>, which may solve my problem.

Do you know Erel, is this likely to be the cause of the FTP.List failing to return any files or folders - this seems to make perfect sense to me.

 

[Erel]

The other thing is if once I've called myftp.List, is there anyway of accessing the raw response from the server?

No. It is handled internally.

This is the first time that such an issue is encountered so I'm not sure.
Overall it is not too complicated to build a custom FTP client. I did it for B4R: https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/esp8266-ftp-client.74383/#content
It will be simpler to implement it in the other platforms.