Objective-C

Get a Remote File's Creation Time

Demonstrates the Chilkat SFtp.GetFileCreateTimeStr method, which returns a remote file's creation date and time. The arguments are the remote path (or handle), whether symbolic links are followed, and whether the first argument is a handle.

Background: Creation time is the least universally available of the three timestamps: many Unix filesystems historically tracked only modified and accessed times, so a server may return nothing or a placeholder. Where it is supported it is genuinely useful — it does not change when a file is edited, unlike the modified time — but code should tolerate its absence rather than depend on it.

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Objective-C

#import <CkoSFtp.h>
#import <NSString.h>

BOOL success = NO;

//  Demonstrates the SFtp.GetFileCreateTimeStr method, which returns a remote file's creation date
//  and time.  The 1st argument is the remote path (or handle), the 2nd selects whether symbolic
//  links are followed, and the 3rd indicates whether the 1st argument is a handle.

CkoSFtp *sftp = [[CkoSFtp alloc] init];

//  Connect, authenticate, and initialize the SFTP subsystem.
int port = 22;
success = [sftp Connect: @"sftp.example.com" port: [NSNumber numberWithInt: port]];
if (success == NO) {
    NSLog(@"%@",sftp.LastErrorText);
    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.
NSString *password = @"mySshPassword";

success = [sftp AuthenticatePw: @"mySshLogin" password: password];
if (success == NO) {
    NSLog(@"%@",sftp.LastErrorText);
    return;
}

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

//  The 2nd argument (bFollowLinks) selects whether a symbolic link is followed to its target.
//  The 3rd argument (bIsHandle) is false here because the 1st argument is a path, not an
//  open handle.
BOOL bFollowLinks = YES;
BOOL bIsHandle = NO;

NSString *createTime = [sftp GetFileCreateTimeStr: @"subdir/report.pdf" bFollowLinks: bFollowLinks bIsHandle: bIsHandle];
if (sftp.LastMethodSuccess == NO) {
    NSLog(@"%@",sftp.LastErrorText);
    return;
}

NSLog(@"%@%@",@"Created: ",createTime);

//  Note: Not all servers and filesystems record a creation time.

[sftp Disconnect];