SFTP Where Did My Upload Go?

This example answers a common question: "I use Chilkat SFTP to upload a file. It says it was successful, but file is not on the server. How do you change directories?"

First, "SFTP" is Secure File Transfer over SSH and has *nothing* to do with FTP (the File Transfer Protocol). It is completely unrelated to FTP. Therefore, FTP concepts such as "current directory", and "binary/ascii transfer modes" don't exist in SFTP.

In SFTP, you authenticate using a user account on the remote server. This could be an actual user account on the server, or a logical user account that exists in the context of the SSH server. In either case, the user account has a home directory. If you open a file on the SSH/SFTP server using only the filename and no path, then your filename will be placed in the user account's home directory. To find out the location of the home directory, call RealPath and pass "." for the directory path. It will return the absolute path of the home directory.

Given that there is no "current directory" concept in SFTP, you must specify either an absolute path or relative path when opening/creating a file that is to be in a directory other than the account's home directory. A relative path is relative to the home directory.

Download Chilkat Ruby Library

require 'chilkat'

#  Important: It is helpful to send the contents of the
#  sftp.LastErrorText property when requesting support.

sftp = Chilkat::CkSFtp.new()

#  Any string automatically begins a fully-functional 30-day trial.
success = sftp.UnlockComponent("Anything for 30-day trial")
if (success != true)
    print sftp.lastErrorText() + "\n"
    exit
end

#  Set some timeouts, in milliseconds:
sftp.put_ConnectTimeoutMs(5000)
sftp.put_IdleTimeoutMs(10000)

#  Connect to the SSH server.
#  The standard SSH port = 22
#  The hostname may be a hostname or IP address.

hostname = "www.my-ssh-server.com"
port = 22
success = sftp.Connect(hostname,port)
if (success != true)
    print sftp.lastErrorText() + "\n"
    exit
end

#  Authenticate with the SSH server.  Chilkat SFTP supports
#  both password-based authenication as well as public-key
#  authentication.  This example uses password authenication.
success = sftp.AuthenticatePw("myLogin","myPassword")
if (success != true)
    print sftp.lastErrorText() + "\n"
    exit
end

#  After authenticating, the SFTP subsystem must be initialized:
success = sftp.InitializeSftp()
if (success != true)
    print sftp.lastErrorText() + "\n"
    exit
end

#  To find the full path of our user account's home directory,
#  call RealPath like this:

absPath = sftp.realPath(".","")
if (absPath == nil )
    print sftp.lastErrorText() + "\n"
    exit
else
    print absPath + "\n";
end