Perl

Get an FTP Listing Entry's Creation Time

Demonstrates the Chilkat Ftp2.GetCreateTimeStr method, which returns the creation time of a cached directory-listing entry as an RFC 822 date-time string. The only argument is a zero-based index.

Background: Creation time is the least commonly reported of the timestamps — many servers and filesystems track only modification and access times — so expect it to be absent on some servers. When present it is genuinely useful because, unlike the modified time, it does not change when a file is edited. The RFC 822 format includes a timezone offset, making the moment unambiguous.

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use strict;
use warnings;
use Chilkat2;

# Demonstrates the Ftp2.GetCreateTimeStr method, which returns the creation time of a cached
# directory-listing entry as an RFC 822 date-time string.  The only argument is a zero-based
# index.

my $ftp = Chilkat2::Ftp2->new;

$ftp->Hostname('ftp.example.com');
$ftp->Username('myFtpLogin');

# 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');

my $success = $ftp->Connect();
if (!$success) {
    print $ftp->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

$success = $ftp->ChangeRemoteDir('public_html');
if (!$success) {
    print $ftp->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

# GetDirCount retrieves the directory listing on the first call and returns the number of
# entries.  A negative return indicates failure.
my $n = $ftp->GetDirCount();
if ($n < 0) {
    print $ftp->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

for my $i (0 .. $n - 1) {
    my $name = $ftp->GetFilename($i);

    # The value is an RFC 822 string such as "Fri, 21 Nov 1997 09:55:06 -0600".  Not all servers
    # report a creation time.
    my $createTime = $ftp->GetCreateTimeStr($i);
    print $name, '  created ', $createTime, "\n";
}

$success = $ftp->Disconnect();
if (!$success) {
    print $ftp->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}