Java

Set a Remote File's Owner and Group

Demonstrates the Chilkat SFtp.SetOwnerAndGroup method, which sets the owner and group of a remote item. The arguments are the remote path (or handle), whether the first argument is a handle, and the new owner and group values.

Background: This is the SFTP equivalent of chown. Changing ownership is a privileged operation on Unix systems — ordinary users generally cannot give their files away — so expect it to fail unless the authenticated account has the necessary rights. It is most often used by administrative jobs that upload files which must then belong to a service account, such as a web server user.

Chilkat Java Downloads

Download Chilkat for Java

Chilkat2 Java

import com.chilkatsoft.chilkat2.ChilkatException;
import com.chilkatsoft.chilkat2.SFtp;

public class ChilkatExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Demonstrates the SFtp.SetOwnerAndGroup method, which sets the owner and group of a remote item.
        // The 1st argument is the remote path (or handle), the 2nd (isHandle) indicates which, and the
        // 3rd and 4th are the new owner and group.

        SFtp sftp = new SFtp();

        // Connect, authenticate, and initialize the SFTP subsystem.
        int port = 22;
        try {
            sftp.connect("sftp.example.com", port);
        } catch (ChilkatException e) {
            System.out.println(e.getLastErrorText());
            return;
        }

        // Normally you would not hard-code the password in source.  You should instead obtain it
        // from an interactive prompt, environment variable, or a secrets vault.
        String password = "mySshPassword";

        try {
            sftp.authenticatePw("mySshLogin", password);

            sftp.initializeSftp();
        } catch (ChilkatException e) {
            System.out.println(e.getLastErrorText());
            return;
        }

        // The 1st argument is a path, so isHandle is false.  Changing ownership typically requires
        // elevated privileges on the server.
        boolean isHandle = false;
        try {
            sftp.setOwnerAndGroup("subdir/report.pdf", isHandle, "www-data", "www-data");
        } catch (ChilkatException e) {
            System.out.println(e.getLastErrorText());
            return;
        }

        System.out.println("Owner and group set.");

        sftp.disconnect();
    }
}