Perl

Get a Remote FTP File's Last-Modified Time by Name

Demonstrates the Chilkat Ftp2.GetLastModifiedTimeByNameStr method, which returns the last-modified time of a named item in the current remote directory as an RFC 822 date-time string. The only argument is the filename.

Background: This queries one item's modification time directly (typically via MDTM) rather than pulling and scanning a whole listing — efficient when you already know the filename and just need its timestamp, for example to decide whether a local copy is stale. The RFC 822 string includes a timezone offset, so the moment is unambiguous.

Chilkat Perl Downloads

Download Chilkat for Perl

Chilkat2 Perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Chilkat2;

# Demonstrates the Ftp2.GetLastModifiedTimeByNameStr method, which returns the last-modified time
# of a named item in the current remote directory as an RFC 822 date-time string.  The only
# argument is the filename.

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;
}

my $lastModified = $ftp->GetLastModifiedTimeByNameStr('report.pdf');
if (!$ftp->LastMethodSuccess) {
    print $ftp->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

print 'Last modified: ', $lastModified, "\n";

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