ftp again

[Sarah Reichelt]

Hi Rand,

I think you would be much better using callbacks rather than trying to 
block. In my experience, it is not always clear what is being blocked & 
what isn't. Here is what I do, in roughly the same circumstance:

First, make a script local where each line contains the name of one 
file to download.
Make another that contains the FTP path e.g. 
"ftp://username:password@ftpserver/folder/"
(All the variables starting with "s" are script locals.)
Then call the "doNextDownload" handler ONCE ONLY.

-- loop through downloads
--
on doNextDownload
   add 1 to sFileCount
   if sFileCount > the number of lines in sDownloadList then
     -- all the downloads are finished, do any tidying up or alerts
     exit doNextDownload
   end if
   put line sFileCount of sDownloadList into tFile
   startDownload tFile
end doNextDownload


-- start downloading file
-- getSaveFolder returns the full path to the folder where the download 
file is to be saved
-- sFtpAddress is a script local that has already been set to include 
the  FTP username, password & path
--
on startDownload pFileName
   put getSaveFolder() & pFileName into sSaveName
   put sFtpAddress & pFileName into tURL
   put tURL into sFtpURL

   libURLDownloadToFile tURL, sSaveName, downloadDone
end startDownload


-- after download, if successful, process file
-- go on to next one regardless
--
on downloadDone pURL, pURLStatus
   if pURLstatus contains "error" is false then
     -- do whatever you want with the downloaded file: sSaveName
   else
     -- handle a download failure
   end if
   -- loop to doing the next download
   doNextDownload
end downloadDone

I am saving the downloaded files to disk. I know you want to show them 
in fields, but I'm sure you can adapt these techniques to suit, either 
by downloading to a temporary file, or downloading into memory in some 
way.

Cheers,
Sarah
sarahr at genesearch.com.au
http://www.troz.net/Rev/

On 8 Sep 2004, at 8:06 am, rand valentine wrote:

>  Basically, what I need to do is to download up to 10 files to update 
> an
> informational database -- I have files on a webpage that hold the
> information -- I have no problem uploading any number of files to this
> webpage, but I can't seem to get proper downloading to work. I was 
> using a
> "put" command because it was said to be "blocking," which I assumed to 
> mean
> that the script commands following the "put" command would not be 
> executed
> until the file was fully downloaded. But it appears that this is not 
> the
> case. So here's my question: what is the best way to do this, i.e., to 
> ftp
> download a bunch of files and have them download in serial sequence?