Core Python Programming (2nd Edition)

17.6. Exercises
FTP
17-1. Simple FTP Client. Given the FTP examples from this chapter, write a small FTP client
program that goes to your favorite Web sites and downloads the latest versions of the
applications you use. This may be a script that you run every few months to make
sure you're using the "latest and greatest." You should probably keep some sort of
table with FTP location, login, and password for your convenience.
17-2. Simple FTP Client and Pattern-Matching. Use your solution to the previous exercise as
a starting point for creating another simple FTP client that either pushes or pulls a set
of files from a remote host using patterns. For example, if you want to move a set of
Python or PDF files from one host to another, allow users to enter "*.py" or "doc*.pdf"
and only transfer those files whose names match.
17-3. Smart FTP Command-Line Client. Create a command-line FTP application similar to the
vanilla Unix /bin/ftp program, however, make it a "better FTP client," meaning it
should have additional useful features. You can take a look at the ncFTP application as
motivation. It can be found at http://ncftp.com. For example, it has the following
features: history, bookmarks (saving FTP locations with log in and password),
download progress, etc. You may have to implement readline functionality for history
and curses for screen control.
17-4. FTP and Multithreading. Create an FTP client that uses Python threads to download
files. You can either upgrade your existing Smart FTP client as in the previous
problem, or just write a more simple client to download files. This can be either a
command-line program where you enter multiple files as arguments to the program,
or a GUI where you let the user select 1+ file(s) to transfer. Extra credit: Allow
patterns, i.e., *.exe. Use individual threads to download each file.
17-5. FTP and GUI. Take your smart FTP client developed above and add a GUI layer on top
of it to form a complete FTP application. You may choose from any of the modern
Python GUI toolkits.
17-6. Subclassing. Derive ftplib.FTP and make a new class FTP2 where you do not need to
give "STOR filename" and "RETR filename" commands with all four (4) retr*() and
stor*() methods ... you only need to pass in the filename. You may choose to either
override the existing methods or create new ones with a '2' suffix, i.e., retrlines2().
The file Tools/scripts/ftpmirror.py in the Python source distribution is a script that
can mirror FTP sites, or portions thereof, using the ftplib module. It can be used as
an extended example that applies to this module. The next five problems feature
creating solutions that revolve around code like ftpmirror.py. You may use code in
ftpmirror.py or implement your own solution with its code as your motivation.