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Advanced FTP - SFTP Scripting - WinSCP

This document discusses advanced scripting techniques for automating tasks with WinSCP beyond what is supported directly through WinSCP scripting. It recommends using the WinSCP .NET assembly or calling WinSCP from scripts in other languages like Windows batch files, JScript, VBScript, PowerShell, or PHP that provide more control and capabilities. It provides examples of automating WinSCP using JScript to execute commands, parse XML logs, and retrieve file listings.

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Ali SDZD
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96 views

Advanced FTP - SFTP Scripting - WinSCP

This document discusses advanced scripting techniques for automating tasks with WinSCP beyond what is supported directly through WinSCP scripting. It recommends using the WinSCP .NET assembly or calling WinSCP from scripts in other languages like Windows batch files, JScript, VBScript, PowerShell, or PHP that provide more control and capabilities. It provides examples of automating WinSCP using JScript to execute commands, parse XML logs, and retrieve file listings.

Uploaded by

Ali SDZD
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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2022-10-21 Unknown author

Advanced FTP/SFTP scripting :: WinSCP


Documentation » Using WinSCP » Guides » Scripting/Automation »

WinSCP .NET assembly mostly deprecates techniques demostrated in this article.


Using the assembly is now preferred approach for advanced automation tasks with
WinSCP.

Before reading this guide make sure you are familiar with WinSCP scripting. For
that you may want to read guide to automation.

Scripting functionality of WinSCP does not support any control sequences,


manipulation of file paths, etc. If you need these, you have to call WinSCP script
from wrapper script implemented in another scripting language.

Choosing Language
Windows command interpreter (batch files)
Windows script host (JScript or VB script)
Access to Input/Output streams
XML parsing
Hidden execution

.NET (C# or VB.NET)


External script interpreters (PowerShell, PHP, Perl, etc)
Further reading

Use language of your preference. If you have no preference or do not know any
scripting language, the easiest may be to use scripting engines available in
Windows:

Windows command interpreter (cmd.exe) to run .bat or .cmd files (for simple
tasks);
Windows script host (cscript.exe or wscript.exe) to run Java Script or VB
Script files.
Windows command interpreter executes .bat or .cmd files. Some of the features it
supports:

Conditional execution based on an exit code of an application or a value of an


environment variable;
An iteration over files matching a mask;
Setting and querying environment variables;
Simple file path manipulation (extracting a directory from a path, extracting
an extension, etc.).

See guide to automation for some examples.

Windows script host is an automation technology for Microsoft Windows that


provides scripting capabilities comparable to batch files, but with a greater range of
supported features. It is language-independent. By default it interprets and runs
plain-text JScript (JavaScript-like) and VBScript. Users can install different
scripting engines.

It supports all the features listed in Windows command interpreter section above
(with greater flexibility). Plus it includes many advanced functions, you may find
useful when using together with WinSCP. See sections below.

To use the examples below copy the JScript code to file (e.g. example.js) and use
cscript.exe to execute it (use /nologo to suppress banner):

cscript /nologo example.js

You can use WScript.Shell to execute WinSCP console interface tool and feed the
script commands (using input stream), without creating temporary script file:

var shell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell");


// run (make it log to XML)
var exec = shell.Exec("winscp.com /xmllog=log.xml");
// feed the commands
exec.StdIn.Write(
"option batch abort\n" +
"open mysession\n" +
"ls\n" +
"exit\n");
// wait until it finishes and collect its output
var output = exec.StdOut.ReadAll();
// optionally print the output
WScript.Echo(output);

You can use MSXML2.DOMDocument object to parse XML log produced by WinSCP. The
following example follows up to the previous one (which starts session with XML
logging and lists contents of initial directory):

// parse XML log file


var doc = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument");
doc.async = false;
doc.load("log.xml");

doc.setProperty("SelectionNamespaces",
"xmlns:w='http://winscp.net/schema/session/1.0'");

// look for file tags


var nodes = doc.selectNodes("//w:file");

WScript.Echo("There are " + nodes.length + " files and subdirectories:");

// list the files


for (var i = 0; i < nodes.length; ++i)
{
var filename = nodes[i].selectSingleNode("w:filename/@value").value;
WScript.Echo(filename);
}

Running the script will produce output like:

There are 14 files and subdirectories:


.
..
.htaccess
commandline.txt
config.txt
directory_cache.txt
dragext.txt
faq.txt
faq_commandline.txt
faq_dir_default.txt
faq_download_temp.txt
faq_drag_move.txt
faq_error_code.txt
faq_filemanager.txt

See also the guide Interpreting XML log for advanced scripting (uses C# language,
though could be easily rewritten to JScript or VB script).

When executing JScript code with cscript.exe, console window is shown. If you
want to execute the JScript without showing console window, use wscript.exe
instead.

Some notes for using wscript:

Every call to WScript.Echo causes message box to be shown, pausing the


execution. So generaly you do not want to use WScript.Echo from wscript.exe
(except maybe to report errors).
Execution of winscp.com opens new console window (if one is not opened
already, e.g. by cscript.exe). Use winscp.exe instead (without /console
switch). However winscp.exe does not allow input/output redirection, so you
need to pass the commands in using command-line.

See SFTP file transfers in .NET.

If you are familiar with other scripting languages, you can use those.

All versions of Windows since Windows XP have PowerShell available. With


PowerShell, it is more convenient to use WinSCP .NET assembly, than the simple
scripting. There are lot of examples of use of the WinSCP .NET assembly in
PowerShell.

If you want to use your another favorite scripting language, but you do not have it
on your Windows machine, you may find installing it troublesome. But you may not
need to install anything actually. E.g. for using PHP interpreter, you can just grab
the Windows binary PHP zip package and extract php.exe and php7ts.dll files out
of it. These two binaries alone support most (if not all) features you need. No
installing or registration is required.
Having the two binaries you can execute PHP script example.php:

<?
system("winscp.com /script=example.txt", $exitcode);

if ($exitcode == 0)
{
echo "success\n";
}
else
{
echo "error\n";
// handle an error
}
?>

with simple command:

php.exe example.php

Troubleshooting;
WinSCP .NET assembly;
Scripting documentation;
Guide to automation;
FAQ about scripting;
Example scripts.

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