Example of simple bash script ftp client

If you need to use FTP to upload some files to a server every so often and want to save yourself some time, you can make a simple Bash script to transfer the files quickly. Rather than entering the username, password, and directory manually, we can get our Bash script to do this tedious legwork for us. In this tutorial, you will see an example script to make FTP transfers a cinch on a Linux system.

In this tutorial you will learn:

• Example of simple bash script ftp client

Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions

Category	Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System	Any Linux distro
Software	Bash shell, ftp
Other	Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions	# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command $ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Example of simple bash script ftp client

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This script first defines variables such as hostname of the ftp server, username and password and then it creates an ftp session and uploads the specified file into your selected directory:

#!/bin/bash

ftp_site=127.0.0.1
username=ftpuser
passwd=pass

PS3='Select a destination directory: '

# bash select
select path in "." "/test" "public_html/myblog/" "backup/images/"
do
ftp -n $ftp_site<<EOF
quote USER $username
quote PASS $passwd
binary
cd $path
put $1
quit
EOF
break
done

Be sure to edit the ftp_site, username, and passwd variables above. You should also change the paths to whichever directories you most commonly upload your files to.

Executing the script:

$ chmod +x ftp_bash_script.sh
$ ./ftp_bash_script.sh file1

Example script output:

$ ./ftp_bash_script.sh somerandomfile 
1) .
2) /test
3) public_html/myblog/
4) backup/images/
Select a destination directory: 2
Connected to 127.0.0.1.
220 (vsFTPd 3.0.5)
331 Please specify the password.
230 Login successful.
200 Switching to Binary mode.
250 Directory successfully changed.
local: somerandomfile remote: somerandomfile
229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||10078|)
150 Ok to send data.
     0        0.00 KiB/s 
226 Transfer complete.
221 Goodbye.

Closing Thoughts

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In this tutorial, we saw how to create an FTP Bash script on a Linux system. Rather than painstakingly entering our hostname, username, and password each time, we can get our script to do the repetitive work for us. Be sure to edit the variables to best suit your uploading habits, including all of the directories that you commonly upload your files to.