Perl

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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use strict;
use warnings;
use Chilkat2;

# 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.

my $sftp = Chilkat2::SFtp->new;

# Connect, authenticate, and initialize the SFTP subsystem.
my $port = 22;
my $success = $sftp->Connect('sftp.example.com', $port);
if (!$success) {
    print $sftp->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

# 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.
my $password = 'mySshPassword';

$success = $sftp->AuthenticatePw('mySshLogin', $password);
if (!$success) {
    print $sftp->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

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

# The 2nd argument (bFollowLinks) selects whether a symbolic link is followed to its target.
# The 3rd argument (bIsHandle) is 0 here because the 1st argument is a path, not an
# open handle.
my $bFollowLinks = 1;
my $bIsHandle = 0;

my $createTime = $sftp->GetFileCreateTimeStr('subdir/report.pdf', $bFollowLinks, $bIsHandle);
if (!$sftp->LastMethodSuccess) {
    print $sftp->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

print 'Created: ', $createTime, "\n";

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

$sftp->Disconnect();