Objective-C

Control How FTP Directory Listings Are Requested

Demonstrates the AllowMlsd, PreferNlst, and ListOption properties, which control which listing command Chilkat uses and what options it passes.

Background: FTP has three listing commands with different trade-offs. MLSD is machine-readable and standardized, so AllowMlsd (on by default) prefers it when the server supports it. When it must fall back to the legacy commands, PreferNlst chooses names-only NLST over the fuller LIST, and ListOption appends flags such as -a (to include hidden files) literally to LIST. Together they adapt listing to a particular server's capabilities and conventions.

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Objective-C

#import <CkoFtp2.h>

BOOL success = NO;

CkoFtp2 *ftp = [[CkoFtp2 alloc] init];

ftp.Hostname = @"ftp.example.com";
ftp.Username = @"myFtpLogin";

//  AllowMlsd (default true) requests machine-readable MLSD listings when the server advertises
//  support.  MLSD is preferred because its format is standardized.
ftp.AllowMlsd = YES;

//  PreferNlst (default false) chooses NLST over LIST when a legacy listing is needed and MLSD is
//  unavailable.  NLST returns only names.
ftp.PreferNlst = NO;

//  ListOption is appended literally to a legacy LIST command; "-a" sends "LIST -a" to include
//  hidden files on Unix servers.
ftp.ListOption = @"-a";

//  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.
ftp.Password = @"myPassword";

success = [ftp Connect];
if (success == NO) {
    NSLog(@"%@",ftp.LastErrorText);
    return;
}

int n = [[ftp GetDirCount] intValue];
NSLog(@"%@%d",@"Entries: ",n);

success = [ftp Disconnect];
if (success == NO) {
    NSLog(@"%@",ftp.LastErrorText);
    return;
}