Send Files via FTP Using PHP

Written by David Walsh on October 10, 2008 · 57 Comments

Sending files to a server via FTP is an essential ability of any web developer or designer. Of course, we all use glossy FTP clients like WS_FTP and FireFTP, but what about FTP automation? You can use PHP to FTP files from one server to another. Let me show you how.

The PHP

$connection = ftp_connect($server);

$login = ftp_login($connection, $ftp_user_name, $ftp_user_pass);

if (!$connection || !$login) { die('Connection attempt failed!'); }

$upload = ftp_put($connection, $dest, $source, $mode);

if (!$upload) { echo 'FTP upload failed!'; }

ftp_close($connection);

Obviously, the first task is to connect to the other server. Once the connection is created, you pass the login credentials. Once you're logged in, you can use the ftp_put() function to send the file. That's it!

What would you use this for? Well, you could set up a cron to create a database backup and send it to an offsite server.

Comments

Alex October 10, 2008

hey!, you forgot to put the source code !!!

mahadeva parsad March 23, 2011

hay i tried to connect to server using ftp from my local system but it coud’t connect to server.my code is correct but it not work please suggest me how to connect with how to pass parameters in details.I hope u help me…………….

david October 10, 2008

@Alex: It’s there.

Alex October 10, 2008

great script !!!!
Thanks!!!!

Loïc Hoguin October 10, 2008

What about using the FTP wrappers instead? The resulting code should be shorter and more intuitive. You could do the following directly and be done with it:

$upload = copy($source, ‘ftp://user:password@host/path/file’);
if (!$upload) { echo ‘FTP upload failed!’; }

Mark Sanborn October 10, 2008

Cool :)

Jacob Molin October 10, 2008

$upload = copy($source,
‘ftp://user:password@host/path/file’);
if (!$upload) { echo ‘FTP upload
failed!’; }

I think the way David Walsh do it is more secure.

I don’t know but i think so ;)

Loïc Hoguin October 10, 2008

I’d say they’re both as insecure. The work done behind the scenes for this particular snippet is the same. If you needed better control (e.g. chmod), however, you would have to use the ftp extension. But most of the time it’s not needed.

Antoine Leclair October 12, 2008

Yay, I didn’t even know there was FTP functions in PHP.

Could be useful to backup stuff… if it was more secure. Also, I think the script run time is limited (to 30 seconds in my case) on lots of hosts.

Michael October 12, 2008

The 30 seconds time-limit can in most cases be changed using
set_time_limit(x);.

If changed, it allows an execution time longer (or shorter…) than the default 30 secs.

Jacob Molin October 12, 2008

Yay, I didn’t even know there was FTP
functions in PHP.

Could be useful to backup stuff… if it
was more secure. Also, I think the
script run time is limited (to 30
seconds in my case) on lots of hosts.

Yes for MySQL BackUp i also use it together with a timer.

But if i want to make a backup of other files on my ftp server i prefer cobian backup!
Cobian
In the start it was a professional programmer who made the program up to version 7 i think. Then he didn’t have time for it, and he published as opensource.
Many other has then made the program up to version 9!

ilyas TEKER October 19, 2008

great job =)

Mike October 26, 2008

And if you want to see progress ?

Trink November 2, 2008

You can’t really see progress using PHP, that’d be more along the lines of Java or Perl. Well, truthfully, if you mess around with output buffering and the ftp nonblocking upload options, you can use ftp_nb_fput() or ftp_nb_put() along with ob_implicit_flush() to send out data via a while loop that updates the page. This can also be done via AJAX, if you flush your output buffer before uploading the file. At that point you can use an XMLHttpRequest to periodically (maybe every second) check on the file’s progress via another PHP file. I personally use Perl alongside the AJAX option though. If you do any of that though, watch out because you cannot force a header at that point, it all has to be done in the output. So it’d require multiple flushes of the output buffer.

Diego November 4, 2008

I get two problems:

the script run time is limited
I can’t see progress

I would like to use this way to upload big files, rather than “post” way.

EDIT: to solve the run time troubble, you should write “set_time_limit(0)” at the begin of the script (I don’t know if this could be insecure)

Abhinav joshi January 9, 2009

Cool :)

Pakistan February 23, 2009

Got more ideas, but can we restrict user to send only .doc file

trink February 28, 2009

Yes.
Before $upload = ftp_put($connection, $dest, $source, $mode); put this:
if(substr($dest,-4) != ‘.doc’) die(“You may only upload .doc files.”);
Obviously the die() can be replaced with your own error handler, just ensure that it halts the script, or just put the rest in an else block.

arius June 22, 2009

i did as you said but then i found this “Warning: ftp_put() [function.ftp-put]: Opening data channel for file transfer. in *“. can you explain why ?

Olivier Lemire February 15, 2012

Look at VINOTH’s post. You need to set:

ftp_pasv($connection, true);

once logged.

Worked for me

Disha Vaghela November 3, 2009

Hey David…its really helpful ! thnx a lot !!!

blackbird November 11, 2009

@david: explain me below code and which are needed to replace with actual value.

$upload = ftp_put($connection, $dest, $source, $mode);

eg: $dest=..
$source=..
$mode=…

Sohbet February 25, 2010

Thanks forever web pages..

tushar March 4, 2010

cool script
q :-
i want to get email id from any page if exist?
how i do it ?
help me

Sohbet odalari March 29, 2010

i want to get email id from any page if exist?
how i do it ?

kelebek April 7, 2010

Nice article and insight. Good to have bumped onto your blog and met you.

Trobury April 8, 2010

goood insight what is want to get mail as attactment

murthy June 28, 2010

GOOOOD one i like it

vinoth August 28, 2010

thank you guys!!!!!!!!!!

i got error on this code. :(

after spending little time, i got the solution.

ftp_pasv($connection, true); // to turns on the passive mode

works!

neo January 2, 2011

this snippet saved my pain in uploading files remotely. im planning to make a central network for photos uploaded using a script on my “main” server.

Zhuge February 16, 2011

The code is incomplete, at best, if the code included a few comments, or if it was written in full, alot of counfusion could be avoided…

Ujjawal March 2, 2011

can u give me complete source code of uploading bigger files like 50-100 mb’s ??

Retrobot May 9, 2011

I would also love to know this, any ideas?

Pramod Rawat March 4, 2011

This Code is not working please tell me the procedure how it will work.
Thanks in advance.

Rajeev Singh Paweria March 21, 2011

great script, I was looking for a similar one for one of my project. Thanks David.

tarim May 12, 2011

Hi,

I tried many times, But, I failed. I do not know why. I always receive Warning: ftp_put(): Could not create file. message. Anyone have any idea?

Thanks

vadiraj May 17, 2011

hey anybody will this code run irrespective of the system…what should be program running at client side….

Chinmay March 18, 2012

Thanks! It worked to upload backup files for me.

ramkumar June 29, 2012

$connection = ftp_connect(“xyz.com”);
$login = ftp_login($connection, “your_xyz_ftp_username”, “your_xyz_ftp_password”);

if (!$connection)
{
die(‘Connection attempt failed!’);
}
else{
echo “connection passed”;
}
if (!$login)
{
die(‘Login attempt failed!’);
}
else{
echo “login passed”;
}
ftp_pasv($connection, true);

// $upload = ftp_put($connection, $dest, $source, $mode);

$upload = ftp_put($connection, “www/recipe_image/adv_banner.jpg”, “adv_banner.jpg”, FTP_BINARY);

if (!$upload) { echo ‘FTP upload failed!’; } else {echo “ftp upload passed”;}

ftp_close($connection);

ramkumar June 29, 2012

// set_time_limit(0); $connection = ftp_connect("easycms.in"); $login = ftp_login($connection, "admin@easycms.in", "hl0809@"); if (!$connection) { die('Connection attempt failed!'); } else{ echo "connection passed"; } if (!$login) { die('Login attempt failed!'); } else{ echo "login passed"; } ftp_pasv($connection, true);


    $source = "adv_banner.jpg";

    $dest = "recipe_image/adv_banner.jpg";
    //$x = substr($dest,-4);

    // echo $x;
    if((substr($dest,-4) == ".jpg") || (substr($dest,-4) == ".png") )

{

 //no problems;

}

else {

die('You may only upload jpg or png files.');

}
    $upload = ftp_put($connection, $dest, $source, FTP_BINARY);

    if (!$upload) { echo 'FTP upload failed!'; } else {echo "ftp upload passed";}
    ftp_close($connection);
?>

Zee August 7, 2012

Hi , i used that code and transferred the file successfully to a ftp server i created. but if i try and transfer it to one of the award space servers it doesn’t work.

Thanks!

//Code to transfer the file
$upload = ftp_put($connection, “test.” . $fileParts ,$source , FTP_BINARY);
if (!$upload) { echo ‘FTP upload failed! ‘; }

Jan Bakalar December 22, 2012

Nice scripts!

Now how would you do it via PHP that you would not only upload a backup of a website to an FTP server, but also deleted the oldest backups (.let’s say zip files) so that there is only a certain amount of them (i.e. 10)?

Thx for your help,
Jan

Ghostofwar January 9, 2013

Hi,
I’m a php newbie…
I’m having problems deleting and uploading files onto ftp site. The following is the php process file i’ve adopted..

Ghostofwar January 9, 2013

document.location=’IMAGE_EDIT.php?error=2&type=’

<?php
}

$IMAGEwidth = 1035;
$IMAGEheight = 450;

list($width, $height) = getimagesize($IMAGE);

if ($width $IMAGEwidth or $height $IMAGEheight)
{
?>

document.location=’IMAGE_EDIT.php?error=1&type=’

document.location=’upload_error.php’

<?php
}
else {
//echo "Connected to $host, for user $ftp_user_name”;
//echo “Host IP is $hostip”;

// delete a file
$delete = ftp_delete($conn_id, $deletefile);
if (!$delete)
{
?>

document.location=’IMAGE_EDIT.php?error=3&type=’

document.location = “IMAGE_COMPLETE.php?type=”;

Ghostofwar January 9, 2013

document.location=’IMAGE_EDIT.php?error=2&type=’

<?php
}

$IMAGEwidth = 1035;
$IMAGEheight = 450;

list($width, $height) = getimagesize($IMAGE);

if ($width $IMAGEwidth or $height $IMAGEheight)
{
?>

document.location=’IMAGE_EDIT.php?error=1&type=’

document.location=’upload_error.php’

<?php
}
else {
//echo "Connected to $host, for user $ftp_user_name”;
//echo “Host IP is $hostip”;

// delete a file
$delete = ftp_delete($conn_id, $deletefile);
if (!$delete)
{
?>

document.location=’IMAGE_EDIT.php?error=3&type=’

document.location = “IMAGE_COMPLETE.php?type=”;

ghostofwar January 9, 2013

apologies…
couldn’t get the whole file copied. help please…
thanks!

PHP e FTP January 30, 2013

[...] ftp_close($connection); http://davidwalsh.name/send-files-ftp-php Rispondi [...]

Riken February 22, 2013

i have used this code it working fine.. but when i have test it with 500 files.. webpage is crashed.. it will upload some files but after some time it will crahsed.

Thanks For Help…

kumutha February 28, 2013

I want to make a ftp connection and to run a php file present on a remote server. uploading and downloading of files to remote server works for me perfectly. But i didnt find any solution for executing file. plz give a solution for dis issue.. thanks in advance..

Unhelpful April 29, 2013

// What is $mode? No explanation given?
// What is $dest? Is that a location? Or is that a remote file name?
// If users have to go over to PHP.net to figure out what you’re talking about, it’s not much of a tut.
// Thanks for trying.

$connection = ftp_connect($server);

$login = ftp_login($connection, $ftp_user_name, $ftp_user_pass);

if (!$connection || !$login) { die(‘Connection attempt failed!’); }

$upload = ftp_put($connection, $dest, $source, $mode);

if (!$upload) { echo ‘FTP upload failed!’; }

ftp_close($connection);

Anonymous June 11, 2013

[...] [...]

Kalabaw July 16, 2013

It Works!

Even September 25, 2013

Hi! Guys..

Please help me……
I got a problem, and I can not find the way to solve it…… T︿T

I want to upload xml file to my server.
(FileZilla Server on Windows 7, and firewall closed).

I used FileZilla upload file succeed in client .
But I try to using PHP ftp_put and copy both function, and both failed.
The following is message from FileZilla Server….

> Connected, sending welcome message...
> USER superman
> 331 Password required for superman
> PASS ********
> 230 Logged on
> CWD /SendFiles
> 250 CWD successful. "/SendFiles" is current directory.
> TYPE A
> 200 Type set to A
> PORT 10,132,30,254,231,8
> 200 Port command successful
> STOR Test.xml
> 150 Opening data channel for file transfer.
> 425 Can't open data connection.
> QUIT
> 221 Goodbye
> disconnected.

Even September 26, 2013

I still can’t solve it.
I was setted port 2100, it can’t working.
I found it can working when port setting normal port (21).

So I used aother way… make it safe in facade and upload successful.
I open firewall and setting connect from given IP.

I think it is a way accomplish what I want.

Harpreet October 24, 2013

A silly Question.
suppose I made a code to upload a file with size of 20mb to server A to server B.
now after accessing the my code via URL, and close the browser, would it still keep uploading in background??

Amila Udana Kalinga December 28, 2013

Thanks Loïc Hoguin, Try this if you upload a zipped like bigger files and overwrite is needed

array('overwrite' => true));	 
$stream_context = stream_context_create($stream_options);

if(!@copy($source,$ftp_path,$stream_context)){
	$errors= error_get_last();
	echo "error on copying: ".$errors['type'];
	echo "\n".$errors['message'];
} else {
	echo "File copied to remote!";
}

ahmad balavi February 11, 2014

I need to move all my website files to another server using php. how can i do that?

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