How to get the latest file out of each folder

6th November 2017

Recently a user has asked via the website chat (the icon at the lower right corner) an interesting question:

I am looking for scriptable FTP to do the following… I have an FTP location with many folders(about 500.) I would like to get the latest file out of each folder. Or better yet, get the latest file out of a list of folders. Can your program do this recursive FTP?

The answer is yes. It is possible to get the latest file out of a list of folders. It is not a simple script but it is definitely possible. The steps needed are the following:

Store the list of remote folders where you want to look in a variable. Each item of the list is separated by the | character.
Use the FOREACH loop to run a set of FTP commands for each folder defined in the previous step
Use the command GETLIST to retrieve the list of files in a folder.
Use again the FOREACH loop to run a set of FTP commands for each file.
Retrieve the last modification time of the remote file using GETFILETIME and save it in a variable.
If it is the most recent modified time we have seen store also the path of the file.
Once all the files are processed go the next folder of the list.
When we have reached the end of the folder list download the file using the path we have saved in a variable.

The only drawback of this script is that it only handles the files in a folder directly, not files stored in subfolders. In other words, it does not go through a tree of subdirectories. But there is a workaround to this limitation: You can add the subfolder to the folder list as /myfolder/mysubfolder.

The full script and its output is:

# Connect to FTP server
OPENHOST("127.0.0.1","test","1234")
 
# Set the list of folders to look into
$folders = "my folder 1|my folder 2|my folder 3| my folder 3/my subfolder"
 
# Save the currenct remote folder path for later
$root_folder = CWDIR()
 
# Here we will save the most recent file modified time found
$most_recent_modification_time =""
 
# And here the most recent file path
$most_recent_file_path =""
 
# For each folder in the previously defined list of folders
FOREACH $folder IN $folders
 
	# Show a message
	PRINT("Checking files in ".$folder)
 
	# Go to that folder
	CHDIR($folder)
 
	# Get the list of files
	GETLIST($file_list,REMOTE_FILES)
 
	# For each file
	FOREACH $file IN $file_list
 
		# Get the last time that file was modified
		$last_modified_time = GETFILETIME(REMOTE,$file)
 
		# A message to track what the script is doing
		PRINT("Last modified time of ".$file." is ".$last_modified_time)
 
		# Is this modification time the most recent we have found?
		IF($most_recent_modification_time=="" OR $most_recent_modification_time&lt;$last_modified_time)
			$most_recent_modification_time=$last_modified_time
			$most_recent_file_path = CWDIR()."/".$file
		END IF
	END FOREACH
 
	# return to parent folder
	CHDIR($root_folder)
END FOREACH
 
# Download the most recent file among the set of folders defined at the top
GETFILE($most_recent_file_path)
 
# Close connection to the FTP server
CLOSEHOST

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How to get the latest file out of each folder