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• Overview
  • Version 11.0.0 Changes
  • Background
• Installation
• Basic Usage
• Documentation
  • Specifying Paths
  • Methods
    • new SftpClient(name, callbacks) ===> SFTP client object
    • connect(config) ===> SFTP object
    • list(path, filter) ==> Array[object]
    • exists(path) ==> boolean
    • stat(path) ==> object
    • get(path, dst, options) ==> String|Stream|Buffer
    • fastGet(remotePath, localPath, options) ===> string
    • put(src, remotePath, options) ==> string
    • fastPut(localPath, remotePath, options) ==> string
    • append(input, remotePath, options) ==> string
    • mkdir(path, recursive) ==> string
    • rmdir(path, recursive) ==> string
    • delete(path, noErrorOK) ==> string
    • rename(fromPath, toPath) ==> string
    • posixRename(fromPath, toPath) ==> string
    • chmod(path, mode) ==> string
    • realPath(path) ===> string
    • cwd() ==> string
    • uploadDir(srcDir, dstDir, options) ==> string
    • downloadDir(srcDir, dstDir, options) ==> string
    • createReadStream(remotePath, options)) ==> stream object
    • createWriteStream(remotePath, options) ==> stream object
    • rcopy(srcPath, dstPath) ==> string
    • end() ==> boolean
    • Add and Remove Listeners
• Platform Quirks & Warnings
  • Server Capabilities
  • Issues with fastPut() and fastGet() Methods
  • Promises, Events & Managing Exceptions
    • Adding Custom Handlers
  • Windows Based Servers
  • Don't Re-use SftpClient Objects
• FAQ
  • Remote server drops connections with only an end event
  • How can I pass writeable stream as dst for get method?
  • How can I upload files without having to specify a password?
  • How can I connect through a Socks Proxy
  • Timeout while waiting for handshake or handshake errors
  • How can I limit upload/download speed
  • Connection hangs or fails for larger files
  • Typescript definition file out of date
• Examples
• Troubleshooting
  • Common Errors
    • Not returning the promise in a then() block
    • Mixing Promise Chains and Async/Await
    • Try/catch and Error Handlers
    • Server Differences
    • Avoid Concurrent Operations
  • Debugging Support
• Logging Issues
• Pull Requests
• Contributors

Overview

This packan provides the class SftpClient, an SFTP client for node.js. It is a promise based decorator class around the excdellent SSH2 package, which provides a pure node Javascript event based ssh2 implementation.

Documentation on the methods and available options in the underlying modules can be found on the SSH2 project pages. As the ssh2-sftp-client package just a wrapper around the ssh2 module, you will find lots of useful information, tips and examples in the ssh2 repository.

Current stable release is *v11.0.0.

Code has been tested against Node versions 18.20.4, 20.16.0 and 22.5.1. Node versions prior to v18.x are not supported. Also note there is currently a deprecation warning when using node v22+. This is from the ssh2 package and outside control of this package.

If you find this module useful and you would like to support the on-going maintenance and support of users, please consider making a small donation.

Version 11.0.0 Changes

The main change in v11 concerns how the package manages events raised by the ssh2 packagwe it depends on. Managing events within the context of asynchronous code as ocurs when using promises is challenging. To understand some of the more subtle issues involved, it is recommended you read the Asynchronous vs. synchronous and Error events sections of the Events chapter from the node documentation.

The previous versions of this package use a global event handler approach to manage events raised outside the execution of any promise. However, this approach is problematic as all the global listeners can really do is raise an error. Attempting to catch errors raised inside event handlers is extremely difficult to manage within client code because those errors are raised inside a separate asynchronous execution context. In version 11, this approach has been replaced by a mechanism whereby the client code can pass in application specific global handlers if desired. If no handlers are defined, default handlers will log the event and when necessary, invalidate any existing connection objects. See the 1.2 section for details.

Background

In basic terms ssh2-sftp-client is a simple wrapper around the ssh2 package which provides a promise base API for interacting with a remote SFTP server . The ssh2 package provides an event based API for interacting with the ssh protcolo. The ssh2-sftp-client package uses the sftp subsystem of this protocol to implement the basic operations typically associated with an sftp client.

Wrapping an event based API with a promised based API comes with a number of challenges. In particular, efficiently and reliably managing events within the context of asynchrounous code execution. This package uses the following strategies;

• All direct interactions with the ssh2 API are wrapped in promise objects. When the API call succeeds, the assoiated promise will be sucessfully resolved. When an error occurs, the promise is rejected.

• An error can either be due to a low level network error, such as a lost connection to the remote server or due to an operational error, such as a file not existing or not having the appropriate permissions for access.

• Each of the available SftpClient methods wrap the method call inside a promise. In crwating eacvh promise, the class adds temporary event listenrs for the error, end and close events and links those liseners to the method's promise via it's reject() method.

• If a promise is waiting to be fulfilled when either of the two types of errors occurs, the error will be communicated back to client code via a rejected promise.

• When the ssh2 emitter raises an event outside the context of any promise, that event will be handled by global event handlers. By default, these event handlers will log the event and will invalidate any existing socket connection objects, preventing any further API calls until a new connection is extablished.

• The SftpClient class constructor supports an optoinal second argument which is an objedct whi8ch can have any of three properties representing event callbaqck funct5ions which will be executed for each of the possible events error, end and close.

The need for both global listeners and temporary promise listeners is because network end, close or error events can occur at any time, including in-betwseen API calls. During an API call, a promise is active and can be used to communicate event information back to the calling code via normal promise communication means i.e. async/await with try/catch or promise chain's then/catch mechanism. However, outside API calls, no promise exists and there is no reliable mechanism to return error and other event information back to calling code. You cannot reliably use try/cdatch to catch errorsx thrown inside event listenrs as you lack control over when the listener code runs. Your try/catch block can easily complete before the error is raised as there is no equivalent await type functionality in this situation.

As there is no simple default way to return error and other event information back to the calling code, ssh2-sftp-client doesn't try to. Instead, the default action is to just log the event information and invalidate any existing sftp connections. This strategy is often sufficient for many use cases. For those cases where it isn't, client code can pass in end, close and/or error listener functions when instantiating the SftpClient object. If provided, these listners will be executed whenever the default global listeners are executed, which is whenever the ssh2 event emitter raises an end, close or error event which is not handled by one of the temporary promise linked event listeners.

Version 11 of ssh2-sftp-client also changes the behaviour of the temporary promise linked end and close listeners. Prior to versioln 11, these listeners did not reject promises. They would only invalidate the underlying ssh connection object. Only the error listener would actually reject the associated promise. This was done because you cannot guarantee the order in which events are responded to.

In most cases, events will occur in the order error, end and then close. The error event would contain details about the cause of the error while the end and close events just communicvate that these events have been raised. The normal flow would be

• Error event occurs including error cause description. Listener catches event, creates an error object and calls the associated promises reject function to reject the promise. The calling process receives a rejected promise object.

• End event occurs. The end listener catches the event and marks the connection object as invalid as the socket connection has been ended. There is no need to call the reject method of the associated promise as it has already been called by the error listener and you can only call one promise resolution function.

• Close event occurs. This event means the socket connection has been closed. The listener will ensure any connection information has been invalidated. Aga8in, ther is no need to call the reject method of the associated promise as it has already been called by the error listener.

In some cases, no ende event is raised and you only get an error event followed by a close event. In versions of ssh2-sftp-client prior to version 11, neither the end or the close listeners attempted to call the reject method of the associated promise. It was assumed that all sftp servers would raise an error event whenever a connection was unexpectedly ended or closed. Unfortunately, it turns out some sftp servers are not well behaved and will terminate the connection without providing any error information or raising an error event. When this occurred in versions prior to version 11, it could result in either an API call hanging because its associated promise never gets rejected or resolved or the call gets rejected with a timeout error aftrer a significant delay.

In order to handle the possible hanging issue in version 11, the temporary promise linked end and close listeners have been updated to always call the promise's reject function if they fire. While this works, it can cause a minor issue. As wse cannot gurantee the order in which events are resonded to by listeners, it is possible that either the end or close listener may be executed before the error listener. When this occurs, the promise is rejected, but the only information wse have at that point is that the promise wsas reject due to either an end or close event. We don't yet have any details regarding what error has caused the unexpected end or close event. Furthermore, because only the first promise resolution function call has any effect, calling reject within the error listener (assuming an error event does eventually arrive) has no effect and does not communicate error information back to the caller. This means that in some circumstances, especially when working with some poorly behaved sftp servers, an sftp connection will be lost/closed with no indication as to reason. This can make diagnosis and bug tracking frustrating.

Installation

npm install ssh2-sftp-client

Basic Usage

let Client = require('ssh2-sftp-client');
let sftp = new Client();

sftp.connect({
  host: '127.0.0.1',
  port: '8080',
  username: 'username',
  password: '******'
}).then(() => {
  return sftp.list('/pathname');
}).then(data => {
  console.log(data, 'the data info');
}).catch(err => {
  console.log(err, 'catch error');
});

Documentation

The connection options are the same as those offered by the underlying SSH2 module, with just a couple of additional properties added to tweak the retry parameters, add a debug function and set the promiseLimit property. For full details on the other properties, please see SSH2 client methods. In particular, see the ssh2 documentation for details relating to setting various key exchange and encryption/signing algorithms used as part of the ssh2 protocol.

All the methods will return a Promise, except for on(), ~removeListener(), createReadStream and createWriteStream, which are typically only used in special use cases.

Note that I don't use Typescript and I don't maintain any typescript definition files. There are some typescript type definition files for this module, but they are maintained separately and have nothing to do with this project. Therefore, please do not log any issues arising from the use of these definition files with this project. Instead, refer your issues to the maintainers of those modules.

Specifying Paths

The convention with both FTP and SFTP is that paths are specified using a 'nix' style i.e. use / as the path separator. This means that even if your SFTP server is running on a win32 platform, you should use / instead of \ as the path separator. For example, for a win32 path of C:\Users\fred you would actually use /C:/Users/fred. If your win32 server does not support the 'nix' path convention, you can try setting the remotePathSep property of the SftpClient object to the path separator of your remote server. This might work, but has not been tested. Please let me know if you need to do this and provide details of the SFTP server so that I can try to create an appropriate environment and adjust things as necessary. At this point, I'm not aware of any win32 based SFTP servers which do not support the 'nix' path convention.

All remote paths must either be absolute e.g. /absolute/path/to/file or they can be relative with a prefix of either ./ (relative to current remote directory) or ../ (relative to parent of current remote directory) e.g. ./relative/path/to/file or ../relative/to/parent/file. It is also possible to do things like ../../../file to specify the parent of the parent of the parent of the current remote directory. The shell tilde (~) and common environment variables like $HOME are NOT supported.

It is important to recognise that the current remote directory may not always be what you may expect. A lot will depend on the remote platform of the SFTP server and how the SFTP server has been configured. When things don't seem to be working as expected, it is often a good idea to verify your assumptions regarding the remote directory and remote paths. One way to do this is to login using a command line program like sftp or lftp.

There is a small performance hit for using ./ and ../ as the module must query the remote server to determine what the root path is and derive the absolute path. Using absolute paths are therefore more efficient and likely more robust.

When specifying file paths, ensure to include a full path i.e. include the remote file name. Don't expect the module to append the local file name to the path you provide. For example, the following will not work

client.put('/home/fred/test.txt', '/remote/dir');

will not result in the file test.txt being copied to /remote/dir/test.txt. You need to specify the target file name as well e.g.

client.put('/home/fred/test.txt', '/remote/dir/test.txt');

Note that the remote file name does not have to be the same as the local file name. The following works fine;

client.put('/home/fred/test.txt', '/remote/dir/test-copy.txt');

This will copy the local file test.txt to the remote file test-copy.txt in the directory /remote/dir.

Methods

new SftpClient(name, callbacks) ===> SFTP client object

Constructor to create a new ssh2-sftp-client object. An optional name string can be provided, which will be used in error messages to help identify which client has thrown the error.

1. Constructor Arguments

   • name: string. An optional name string used in error messages. Defaults to the string 'sftp'
   • callbacks: object. An object with the properties error, end and close. Associted with each property is a function that will be executed whenever the associated global event listener for error, end or close is executed. The error function should accept one argument. The end and close functions have no arguments. Default functions just print a message to console.log().

2. Example Use

   'use strict';
   
   const Client = require('ssh2-sftp-client');
   
   const config = {
     host: 'example.com',
     username: 'donald',
     password: 'my-secret'
   };
   
   const sftp = new Client('example-client');
   
   sftp.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       return sftp.cwd();
     })
     .then(p => {
       console.log(`Remote working directory is ${p}`);
       return sftp.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.log(`Error: ${err.message}`); // error message will include 'example-client'
     });
   

connect(config) ===> SFTP object

Connect to an sftp server. Full documentation for connection options is available here

1. Connection Options

   This module is based on the excellent SSH2 module. That module is a general SSH2 client and server library and provides much more functionality than just SFTP connectivity. Many of the connect options provided by that module are less relevant for SFTP connections. It is recommended you keep the config options to the minimum needed and stick to the options listed in the commonOpts below.

   The retries, retry_factor and retry_minTimeout options are not part of the SSH2 module. These are part of the configuration for the retry package and what is used to enable retrying of sftp connection attempts. See the documentation for that package for an explanation of these values.

   The promiseLimit is another option which is not part of the ssh2 module and is specific to ssh2-sftp-client. It is a property used to limit the maximum number of concurrent promises possible when either downloading or uploading a directory tree using the downloadDir() or uploadDir() methods. The default setting for this property is 10. NOTE: bigger doe snot mean better. Many factors can affect what is the ideal setting for promiseLimit. If it is too large, any benefits are lost while node spends time switching contexts and/or withi the overheads associated with creating and cleaning up promises. Lots of factors can affect what the setting should be, including size of files, number of files, speed of network, version of node, capabilities of remote sftp server etc. A setting of 10 seems to be a reasonably good default and should be adequate for most use cases. However, if you feel it needs to be changed, I highly recommend that you benchmark different values to work out what is the best maximum size before you begin to see a performance drop off.

   // common options
   
   let commonOpts {
     host: 'localhost', // string Hostname or IP of server.
     port: 22, // Port number of the server.
     forceIPv4: false, // boolean (optional) Only connect via IPv4 address
     forceIPv6: false, // boolean (optional) Only connect via IPv6 address
     username: 'donald', // string Username for authentication.
     password: 'borsch', // string Password for password-based user authentication
     agent: process.env.SSH_AGENT, // string - Path to ssh-agent's UNIX socket
     privateKey: fs.readFileSync('/path/to/key'), // Buffer or string that contains
     passphrase: 'a pass phrase', // string - For an encrypted private key
     readyTimeout: 20000, // integer How long (in ms) to wait for the SSH handshake
     strictVendor: true, // boolean - Performs a strict server vendor check
     debug: myDebug,// function - Set this to a function that receives a single
                   // string argument to get detailed (local) debug information.
     retries: 2, // integer. Number of times to retry connecting
     retry_factor: 2, // integer. Time factor used to calculate time between retries
     retry_minTimeout: 2000, // integer. Minimum timeout between attempts
     promiseLimit: 10, // max concurrent promises for downloadDir/uploadDir
   };
   
   // rarely used options
   
   let advancedOpts {
     localAddress,
     localPort,
     hostHash,
     hostVerifier,
     agentForward,
     localHostname,
     localUsername,
     tryKeyboard,
     authHandler,
     keepaliveInterval,
     keepaliveCountMax,
     sock,
     algorithms,
     compress
   };
   

2. Example Use

   sftp.connect({
     host: 'example.com',
     port: 22,
     username: 'donald',
     password: 'youarefired'
   });
   

list(path, filter) ==> Array[object]

Retrieves a directory listing. This method returns a Promise, which once realised, returns an array of objects representing items in the remote directory.

• path: {String} Remote directory path
• filter: (optional) {function} A function used to filter the items included in the returned array. The function is called for each item with the item object being passed in as the argument. The function is passed to Array.filter() to perform the filtering.

1. Example Use

   const Client = require('ssh2-sftp-client');
   
   const config = {
     host: 'example.com',
     port: 22,
     username: 'red-don',
     password: 'my-secret'
   };
   
   let sftp = new Client();
   
   sftp.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       return sftp.list('/path/to/remote/dir');
     })
     .then(data => {
       console.log(data);
     })
     .then(() => {
       sftp.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

2. Return Objects

   The objects in the array returned by list() have the following properties;

   {
     type: '-', // file type(-, d, l)
     name: 'example.txt', // file name
     size: 43, // file size
     modifyTime: 1675645360000, // file timestamp of modified time
     accessTime: 1675645360000, // file timestamp of access time
     rights: {
       user: 'rw',
       group: 'r',
       other: 'r',
     },
     owner: 1000, // user ID
     group: 1000, // group ID
     longname: '-rw-r--r--  1 fred  fred  43 Feb 6 12:02 exaple.txt', // like ls -l line
   }
   

exists(path) ==> boolean

Tests to see if remote file or directory exists. Returns type of remote object if it exists or false if it does not.

1. Example Use

   const Client = require('ssh2-sftp-client');
   
   const config = {
     host: 'example.com',
     port: 22,
     username: 'red-don',
     password: 'my-secret'
   };
   
   let sftp = new Client();
   
   sftp.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       return sftp.exists('/path/to/remote/dir');
     })
     .then(data => {
       console.log(data);          // will be false or d, -, l (dir, file or link)
     })
     .then(() => {
       sftp.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

stat(path) ==> object

Returns the attributes associated with the object pointed to by path.

• path: String. Remote path to directory or file on remote server

1. Attributes

   The stat() method returns an object with the following properties;

   let stats = {
     mode: 33279, // integer representing type and permissions
     uid: 1000, // user ID
     gid: 985, // group ID
     size: 5, // file size
     accessTime: 1566868566000, // Last access time. milliseconds
     modifyTime: 1566868566000, // last modify time. milliseconds
     isDirectory: false, // true if object is a directory
     isFile: true, // true if object is a file
     isBlockDevice: false, // true if object is a block device
     isCharacterDevice: false, // true if object is a character device
     isSymbolicLink: false, // true if object is a symbolic link
     isFIFO: false, // true if object is a FIFO
     isSocket: false // true if object is a socket
   };
   

2. Example Use

   let client = new Client();
   
   client.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       return client.stat('/path/to/remote/file');
     })
     .then(data => {
       // do something with data
     })
     .then(() => {
       client.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

get(path, dst, options) ==> String|Stream|Buffer

Retrieve a file from a remote SFTP server. The dst argument defines the destination and can be either a string, a stream object or undefined. If it is a string, it is interpreted as the path to a location on the local file system (path should include the file name). If it is a stream object, the remote data is passed to it via a call to pipe(). If dst is undefined, the method will put the data into a buffer and return that buffer when the Promise is resolved. If dst is defined, it is returned when the Promise is resolved.

In general, if you're going to pass in a string as the destination, you are better off using the fastGet() method.

• path: String. Path to the remote file to download
• dst: String|Stream. Destination for the data. If a string, it should be a local file path.
• options: Options for the get() command (see below).

1. Options

   The options argument can be used to pass options to the underlying streams and pipe call used by this method. The argument is an object with three possible properties, readStreamOptions, writeStreamOptions and pipeOptions. The values for each of these properties should be an object containing the required options. For example, possible read stream and pipe options could be defined as

   let options = {
     readStreamOptions: {
       flags: 'r',
       encoding: null,
       handle: null,
       mode: 0o666,
       autoClose: true
     },
     pipeOptions: {
       end: false
     }};
   
   

   Most of the time, you won't want to use any options. Sometimes, it may be useful to set the encoding. For example, to 'utf-8'. However, it is important not to do this for binary files to avoid data corruption.

2. Example Use

   let client = new Client();
   
   let remotePath = '/remote/server/path/file.txt';
   let dst = fs.createWriteStream('/local/file/path/copy.txt');
   
   client.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       return client.get(remotePath, dst);
     })
     .then(() => {
       client.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

   • Tip: See examples file in the Git repository for more examples. You can pass any writeable stream in as the destination. For example, if you pass in zlib.createGunzip() writeable stream, you can both download and decompress a gzip file 'on the fly'.

fastGet(remotePath, localPath, options) ===> string

Downloads a file at remotePath to localPath using parallel reads for faster throughput. This is the simplest method if you just want to download a file. However, fastGet functionality depends heavily on remote sftp server capabilities and not all servers have the concurrency support required. See the Platform Quirks & Warnings section of this README.

Bottom line, when it works, it tends to work reliably. However, for many servers, it simply won't work or will result in truncated/corrupted data.

• remotePath: String. Path to the remote file to download
• localPath: String. Path on local file system for the downloaded file. The local path should include the filename to use for saving the file.
• options: Options for fastGet() (see below)

1. Options

   {
     concurrency: 64, // integer. Number of concurrent reads to use
     chunkSize: 32768, // integer. Size of each read in bytes
     step: function(total_transferred, chunk, total) // callback called each time a
                                                     // chunk is transferred
   }
   

   • Warning: Some servers do not respond correctly to requests to alter chunk size. This can result in lost or corrupted data.

2. Sample Use

   let client = new Client();
   let remotePath = '/server/path/file.txt';
   let localPath = '/local/path/file.txt';
   
   client.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       client.fastGet(remotePath, localPath);
     })
     .then(() => {
       client.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

put(src, remotePath, options) ==> string

Upload data from local system to remote server. If the src argument is a string, it is interpreted as a local file path to be used for the data to transfer. If the src argument is a buffer, the contents of the buffer are copied to the remote file and if it is a readable stream, the contents of that stream are piped to the remotePath on the server.

• src: string | buffer | readable stream. Data source for data to copy to the remote server.
• remotePath: string. Path to the remote file to be created on the server.
• options: object. Options which can be passed to adjust the read and write stream used in sending the data to the remote server or the pipe call used to make the data transfer (see below).

1. Options

   The options object supports three properties, readStreamOptions, writeStreamOptions and pipeOptions. The value for each property should be an object with options as properties and their associated values representing the option value. For example, you might use the following to set writeStream options.

   {
     writeStreamOptions: {
       flags: 'w',  // w - write and a - append
       encoding: null, // use null for binary files
       mode: 0o666, // mode to use for created file (rwx)
   }}
   

   The most common options to use are mode and encoding. The values shown above are the defaults. You do not have to set encoding to utf-8 for text files, null is fine for all file types. However, using utf-8 encoding for binary files will often result in data corruption.

   Note that you cannot set autoClose: false for writeStreamOptions. If you attempt to set this property to false, it will be ignored. This is necessary to avoid a race condition which may exist when setting autoClose to false on the writeStream. As there is no easy way to access the writeStream once the promise has been resolved, setting this to autoClose false is not terribly useful as there is no easy way to manually close the stream after the promise has been resolved.

2. Example Use

   let client = new Client();
   
   let data = fs.createReadStream('/path/to/local/file.txt');
   let remote = '/path/to/remote/file.txt';
   
   client.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       return client.put(data, remote);
     })
     .then(() => {
       return client.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

   • Tip: If the src argument is a path string, consider just using fastPut().

fastPut(localPath, remotePath, options) ==> string

Uploads the data in file at localPath to a new file on remote server at remotePath using concurrency. The options object allows tweaking of the fast put process. Note that this functionality is heavily dependent on the capabilities of the remote sftp server, which must support the concurrency operations used by this method. This is not part of the standard and therefore is not available in all sftp servers. See the Platform Quirks & Warnings for more details.

Bottom line, when it works, it tends to work well. However, when it doesn't work, it may fail completely or it may result in truncated or corrupted data transfers.

• localPath: string. Path to local file to upload
• remotePath: string. Path to remote file to create
• options: object. Options passed to createWriteStream (see below)

1. Options

   {
     concurrency: 64, // integer. Number of concurrent reads
     chunkSize: 32768, // integer. Size of each read in bytes
     mode: 0o755, // mixed. Integer or string representing the file mode to set
     step: function(total_transferred, chunk, total) // function. Called every time
     // a part of a file was transferred
   }
   

   • Warning: There have been reports that some SFTP servers will not honour requests for non-default chunk sizes. This can result in data loss or corruption.

2. Example Use

   let localFile = '/path/to/file.txt';
   let remoteFile = '/path/to/remote/file.txt';
   let client = new Client();
   
   client.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       client.fastPut(localFile, remoteFile);
     })
     .then(() => {
       client.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

append(input, remotePath, options) ==> string

Append the input data to an existing remote file. There is no integrity checking performed apart from normal writeStream checks. This function simply opens a writeStream on the remote file in append mode and writes the data passed in to the file.

• input: buffer | readStream. Data to append to remote file
• remotePath: string. Path to remote file
• options: object. Options to pass to writeStream (see below)

1. Options

   The following options are supported;

   {
     flags: 'a',  // w - write and a - append
     encoding: null, // use null for binary files
     mode: 0o666, // mode to use for created file (rwx)
     autoClose: true // automatically close the write stream when finished
   }
   

   The most common options to use are mode and encoding. The values shown above are the defaults. You do not have to set encoding to utf-8 for text files, null is fine for all file types. Generally, I would not attempt to append binary files.

2. Example Use

   let remotePath = '/path/to/remote/file.txt';
   let client = new Client();
   
   client.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       return client.append(Buffer.from('Hello world'), remotePath);
     })
     .then(() => {
       return client.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

mkdir(path, recursive) ==> string

Create a new directory. If the recursive flag is set to true, the method will create any directories in the path which do not already exist. Recursive flag defaults to false.

• path: string. Path to remote directory to create
• recursive: boolean. If true, create any missing directories in the path as well

1. Example Use

   let remoteDir = '/path/to/new/dir';
   let client = new Client();
   
   client.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       return client.mkdir(remoteDir, true);
     })
     .then(() => {
       return client.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

rmdir(path, recursive) ==> string

Remove a directory. If removing a directory and recursive flag is set to true, the specified directory and all sub-directories and files will be deleted. If set to false and the directory has sub-directories or files, the action will fail.

• path: string. Path to remote directory
• recursive: boolean. If true, remove all files and directories in target directory. Defaults to false

Note: There has been at least one report that some SFTP servers will allow non-empty directories to be removed even without the recursive flag being set to true. While this is not standard behaviour, it is recommended that users verify the behaviour of rmdir if there are plans to rely on the recursive flag to prevent removal of non-empty directories.

1. Example Use

   let remoteDir = '/path/to/remote/dir';
   let client = new Client();
   
   client.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       return client.rmdir(remoteDir, true);
     })
     .then(() => {
       return client.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

delete(path, noErrorOK) ==> string

Delete a file on the remote server.

• path: string. Path to remote file to be deleted.

• noErrorOK: boolean. If true, no error is raised when you try to delete a non-existent file. Default is false.

1. Example Use

   let remoteFile = '/path/to/remote/file.txt';
   let client = new Client();
   
   client.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       return client.delete(remoteFile);
     })
     .then(() => {
       return client.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

rename(fromPath, toPath) ==> string

Rename a file or directory from fromPath to toPath. You must have the necessary permissions to modify the remote file.

• fromPath: string. Path to existing file to be renamed
• toPath: string. Path to new file existing file is to be renamed to. Should not already exist.

1. Example Use

   let from = '/remote/path/to/old.txt';
   let to = '/remote/path/to/new.txt';
   let client = new Client();
   
   client.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       return client.rename(from, to);
     })
     .then(() => {
       return client.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

posixRename(fromPath, toPath) ==> string

This method uses the openssh POSIX rename extension introduced in OpenSSH 4.8. The advantage of this version of rename over standard SFTP rename is that it is an atomic operation and will allow renaming a resource where the destination name exists. The POSIX rename will also work on some file systems which do not support standard SFTP rename because they don't support the system hardlink() call. The POSIX rename extension is available on all openSSH servers from 4.8 and some other implementations. This is an extension to the standard SFTP protocol and therefore is not supported on all sftp servers.

• fromPath: string. Path to existing file to be renamed.
• toPath: string. Path for new name. If it already exists, it will be replaced by file specified in fromPath

let from = '/remote/path/to/old.txt';
let to = '/remote/path/to/new.txt';
let client = new Client();

client.connect(config)
  .then(() => {
    return client.posixRename(from, to);
  })
  .then(() => {
    return client.end();
  })
  .catch(err => {
    console.error(err.message);
  });

chmod(path, mode) ==> string

Change the mode (read, write or execute permissions) of a remote file or directory.

• path: string. Path to the remote file or directory
• mode: octal. New mode to set for the remote file or directory

1. Example Use

   let path = '/path/to/remote/file.txt';
   let newMode = 0o644;  // rw-r-r
   let client = new Client();
   
   client.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       return client.chmod(path, newMode);
     })
     .then(() => {
       return client.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

realPath(path) ===> string

Converts a relative path to an absolute path on the remote server. This method is mainly used internally to resolve remote path names.

Warning: Currently, there is a platform inconsistency with this method on win32 platforms. For servers running on non-win32 platforms, providing a path which does not exist on the remote server will result in an empty e.g. '', absolute path being returned. On servers running on win32 platforms, a normalised path will be returned even if the path does not exist on the remote server. It is therefore advised not to use this method to also verify a path exists. instead, use the exist() method.

• path: A file path, either relative or absolute. Can handle '.' and '..', but does not expand '~'.

cwd() ==> string

Returns what the server believes is the current remote working directory.

uploadDir(srcDir, dstDir, options) ==> string

Upload the directory specified by srcDir to the remote directory specified by dstDir. The dstDir will be created if necessary. Any sub directories within srcDir will also be uploaded. Any existing files in the remote path will be overwritten.

The upload process also emits 'upload' events. These events are fired for each successfully uploaded file. The upload event calls listeners with 1 argument, an object which has properties source and destination. The source property is the path of the file uploaded and the destination property is the path to where the file was uploaded. The purpose of this event is to provide some way for client code to get feedback on the upload progress. You can add your own listener using the on() method.

The 3rd argument is an options object with two supported properties, filter and useFastput.

The filter option is a function which will be called for each item to be uploaded. The function will be called with two arguments. The first argument is the full path of the item to be uploaded and the second argument is a boolean, which will be true if the target path is for a directory. The filter function will be called for each item in the source path. If the function returns true, the item will be uploaded. If it returns false, it will be filtered and not uploaded. The filter function is called via the Array.filter method. These array comprehension methods are known to be unsafe for asynchronous functions. Therefore, only synchronous filter functions are supported at this time.

The useFastput option is a boolean option. If true, the method will use the faster fastPut() method to upload files. Although this method is faster, it is not supported by all SFTP servers. Enabling this option when unsupported by the remote SFTP server will result in failures.

• srcDir: A local file path specified as a string
• dstDir: A remote file path specified as a string
• options: An options object which supports two properties, filter and useFastput. A filter predicate function which is called for each item in the source path. The argument will receive two arguments. The first is the full path to the item and the second is a boolean which will be true if the item is a directory. If the function returns true, the item will be uploaded, otherwise it will be filtered out and ignored. The useFastput option is a boolean option. If true, the method will use the faster, but less supported, fastPut() method to transfer files. The default is to use the slightly slower, but better supported, put() method.

1. Example

   'use strict';
   
   // Example of using the uploadDir() method to upload a directory
   // to a remote SFTP server
   
   const path = require('path');
   const SftpClient = require('../src/index');
   
   const dotenvPath = path.join(__dirname, '..', '.env');
   require('dotenv').config({path: dotenvPath});
   
   const config = {
     host: process.env.SFTP_SERVER,
     username: process.env.SFTP_USER,
     password: process.env.SFTP_PASSWORD,
     port: process.env.SFTP_PORT || 22
   };
   
   async function main() {
     const client = new SftpClient('upload-test');
     const src = path.join(__dirname, '..', 'test', 'testData', 'upload-src');
     const dst = '/home/tim/upload-test';
   
     try {
       await client.connect(config);
       client.on('upload', info => {
         console.log(`Listener: Uploaded ${info.source}`);
       });
       let rslt = await client.uploadDir(src, dst);
       return rslt;
     } catch (err) {
       console.error(err);
     } finally {
       client.end();
     }
   }
   
   main()
     .then(msg => {
       console.log(msg);
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.log(`main error: ${err.message}`);
     });
   
   

downloadDir(srcDir, dstDir, options) ==> string

Download the content of the remote directory specified by srcDir to the local file system directory specified by dstDir. The dstDir directory will be created if required. All sub directories within srcDir will also be copied. Any existing files in the local path will be overwritten. No files in the local path will be deleted.

The method also emits download events to provide a way to monitor download progress. The download event listener is called with one argument, an object with two properties, source and destination. The source property is the path to the remote file that has been downloaded and the destination is the local path to where the file was downloaded to. You can add a listener for this event using the on() method.

The options argument is an options object with two supported properties, filter and useFastget. The filter argument is a predicate function which will be called with two arguments for each potential item to be downloaded. The first argument is the full path of the item and the second argument is a boolean, which will be true if the item is a directory. If the function returns true, the item will be included in the download. If it returns false, it will be filtered and ignored. The filter function is called via the Array.filter method. These array comprehension methods are known to be unsafe for asynchronous functions. Therefore, only synchronous filter functions are supported at this time.

If the useFastget property is set to true, the method will use fastGet() to transfer files. The fastGet method is faster, but not supported by all SFTP services.

• srcDir: A remote file path specified as a string
• dstDir: A local file path specified as a string
• options: An object with two supported properties, filter and useFastget. The filter property is a function accepting two arguments, the full path to an item and a boolean value which will be true if the item is a directory. The function is called for each item in the download path and should return true to include the item and false to exclude it in the download. The useFastget property is a boolean. If true, the fastGet() method will be used to transfer files. If false (the default), the slower but better supported get() method is used. .

1. Example

   'use strict';
   
   // Example of using the downloadDir() method to upload a directory
   // to a remote SFTP server
   
   const path = require('path');
   const SftpClient = require('../src/index');
   
   const dotenvPath = path.join(__dirname, '..', '.env');
   require('dotenv').config({path: dotenvPath});
   
   const config = {
     host: process.env.SFTP_SERVER,
     username: process.env.SFTP_USER,
     password: process.env.SFTP_PASSWORD,
     port: process.env.SFTP_PORT || 22
   };
   
   async function main() {
     const client = new SftpClient('upload-test');
     const dst = '/tmp';
     const src = '/home/tim/upload-test';
   
     try {
       await client.connect(config);
       client.on('download', info => {
   console.log(`Listener: Download ${info.source}`);
       });
       let rslt = await client.downloadDir(src, dst);
       return rslt;
     } finally {
       client.end();
     }
   }
   
   main()
     .then(msg => {
       console.log(msg);
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.log(`main error: ${err.message}`);
     });
   
   

createReadStream(remotePath, options)) ==> stream object

Returns a read stream object which is attached to the remote file specified by the remotePath argument. This is a low level method which just returns a read stream object. Client code is fully responsible for managing and releasing the resources associated with the stream once finished i.e. closing files, removing listeners etc.

• remotePath: A remote file path specified as a string
• options: An options object. Supported properties are
  • flags: defaults to 'r'
  • encoding: defaults to null
  • handle: defaults to null
  • mode: 0o666
  • autoClose: defaults to true. If set to false, client code is responsible for closing file descriptors when finished
  • start: Default 0. Position to start reading bytes from (inclusive)
  • end: Position to stop reading bytes (inclusive).

createWriteStream(remotePath, options) ==> stream object

Returns a write stream object which is attached to the remote file specified in the remotePath argument. This is a low level function which just returns the stream object. Client code is fully responsible for managing that object, including closing any file descriptors and removing listeners etc.

• remotePath: Path to the remote file specified as a string
• options: An object containing stream options. Supported properties include
  • flags: default 'w'
  • encoding: default null
  • mode: 0o666
  • autoClose: true
  • start: Byte position to start writing from (inclusive). May require changing flag to 'r+'.

rcopy(srcPath, dstPath) ==> string

Perform a remote file copy. The file identified by the srcPath argument will be copied to the file specified as the dstPath argument. The directory where dstPath will be placed must exist, but the actual file must not i.e. no overwrites allowed.

• srcPath: Path to remote file to be copied specified as a string
• dstPath: Path to where the copy will be created specified as a string

end() ==> boolean

Ends the current client session, releasing the client socket and associated resources. This function also removes all listeners associated with the client.

1. Example Use

   let client = new Client();
   
   client.connect(config)
     .then(() => {
       // do some sftp stuff
     })
     .then(() => {
       return client.end();
     })
     .catch(err => {
       console.error(err.message);
     });
   

Add and Remove Listeners

Although normally not required, you can add and remove custom listeners on the ssh2 client object. This object supports a number of events, but only a few of them have any meaning in the context of SFTP. These are

• error: An error occurred. Calls listener with an error argument.
• end: The socket has been disconnected. No argument.
• close: The socket was closed.

1. on(eventType, listener)

   Adds the specified listener to the specified event type. It the event type is error, the listener should accept 1 argument, which will be an Error object. The event handlers for end and close events have no arguments.

   The handlers will be added to the beginning of the listener's event handlers, so it will be called before any of the ssh2-sftp-client listeners.

2. removeListener(eventType, listener)

   Removes the specified listener from the event specified in eventType. Note that the end() method automatically removes all listeners from the client object.

Platform Quirks & Warnings

Server Capabilities

All SFTP servers and platforms are not equal. Some facilities provided by ssh2-sftp-client either depend on capabilities of the remote server or the underlying capabilities of the remote server platform. As an example, consider chmod(). This command depends on a remote file system which implements the 'nix' concept of users and groups. The win32 platform does not have the same concept of users and groups, so chmod() will not behave in the same way.

One way to determine whether an issue you are encountering is due to ssh2-sftp-client or due to the remote server or server platform is to use a simple CLI sftp program, such as openSSH's sftp command. If you observe the same behaviour using plain sftp on the command line, the issue is likely due to server or remote platform limitations. Note that you should not use a GUI sftp client, like Filezilla or winSCP as such GUI programs often attempt to hide these server and platform incompatibilities and will take additional steps to simulate missing functionality etc. You want to use a CLI program which does as little as possible.

Issues with fastPut() and fastGet() Methods

The fastPut() and fastGet() methods are known to be somewhat dependent on SFTP server capabilities. Some SFTP servers just do not work correctly with concurrent connections and some are known to have issues with negotiating packet sizes. These issues can sometimes be resolved by tweaking the options supplied to the methods, such as setting number of concurrent connections or a specific packet size.

To see an example of the type of issues you can observe with fastPut() or fastGet(), have a look at issue 407, which describes the experiences of one user. Bottom line, when it works, it tends to work well and be significantly faster than using just get() or put(). However, when developing code to run against different SFTP servers, especially where you are unable to test against each server, you are likely better off just using get() and put() or structuring your code so that users can select which method to use (this is what ssh2-sftp-client does - for example, see the !downloadDir() and uploadDir() methods.

Promises, Events & Managing Exceptions

One of the challenges in providing a Promise based API over a module like SSH2, which is event based is how to ensure events are handled appropriately. The challenge is due to the synchronous nature of events. You cannot use try/catch for events because you have no way of knowing when the event might fire. For example, it could easily fire after your try/catch block as completed execution.

Things become even more complicated once you mix in Promises. When you define a promise, you have to methods which can be called to fulfil a promise, resolve and reject. Only one can be called - once you call resolve, you cannot call reject (well, you can call it, but it won't have any impact on the fulfilment status of the promise). The problem arises when an event, for example an error event is fired either after you have resolved a promise or possibly in-between promises. If you don't catch the error event, your script will likely crash with an uncaught exception error.

To make matters worse, some servers, particularly servers running on a Windows platform, will raise multiple errors for the same error event. For example, when you attempt to connect with a bad username or password, you will get a All authentication methods have failed exception. However, under Windows, you will also get a Connection reset by peer exception. If we reject the connect promise based on the authentication failure exception, what do we do with the reset by peer exception? More critically, what will handle that exception given the promise has already been fulfilled and completed? To make matters worse, it seems that Windows based servers also raise an error event for non-errors. For example, when you call the end() method, the connection is closed. On windows, this also results in a connection reset by peer error. While it could be argued that the remote server resetting the connection after receiving a disconnect request is not an error, it doesn't change the fact that one is raised and we need to somehow deal with it.

To handle this, ssh2-sftp-client implements a couple of strategies. Firstly, when you call one of the module's methods, it adds error, end and close event listeners which will call the reject method on the enclosing promise. It also keeps track of whether an error has been handled and if it has, it ignores any subsequent errors until the promise ends. Typically, the first error caught has the most relevant information and any subsequent error events are less critical or informative, so ignoring them has no negative impact. Provided one of the events is raised before the promise is fulfilled, these handlers will consume the event and deal with it appropriately.

In testing, it was found that in some situations, particularly during connect operations, subsequent errors fired with a small delay. This prevents the errors from being handled by the event handlers associated with the connect promise. To deal with this, a small 500ms delay has been added to the connect() method, which effectively delays the removal of the event handlers until all events have been caught.

The other area where additional events are fired is during the end() call. To deal with these events, the end() method sets up listeners which will simply ignore additional error, end and close events. It is assumed that once you have called end() you really only care about any main error which occurs and no longer care about other errors that may be raised as the connection is terminated.

In addition to the promise based event handlers, ssh2-sftp-client also implements global event handlers which will catch any error, end or close events. Essentially, these global handlers only reset the sftp property of the client object, effectively ensuring any subsequent calls are rejected and in the case of an error, send the error to the console.

Adding Custom Handlers

While the above strategies appear to work for the majority of use cases, there are always going to be edge cases which require more flexible or powerful event handling. To support this, the on() and removeListener() methods are provided. Any event listener added using the on() method will be added at the beginning of the list of handlers for that event, ensuring it will be called before any global or promise local events. See the documentation for the on() method for details.

Windows Based Servers

It appears that when the sftp server is running on Windows, a ECONNRESET error signal is raised when the end() method is called. Unfortunately, this signal is raised after a considerable delay. This means we cannot remove the error handler used in the end() promise as otherwise you will get an uncaught exception error. Leaving the handler in place, even though we will ignore this error, solves that issue, but unfortunately introduces a new problem. Because we are not removing the listener, if you re-use the client object for subsequent connections, an additional error handler will be added. If this happens more than 11 times, you will eventually see the Node warning about a possible memory leak. This is because node monitors the number of error handlers and if it sees more than 11 added to an object, it assumes there is a problem and generates the warning.

The best way to avoid this issue is to not re-use client objects. Always generate a new sftp client object for each new connection.

Don't Re-use SftpClient Objects

Due to an issue with ECONNRESET error signals when connecting to Windows based SFTP servers, it is not possible to remove the error handler in the end() method. This means that if you re-use the SftpClient object for multiple connections e.g. calling connect(), then end(), then connect() etc, you run the risk of multiple error handlers being added to the SftpClient object. After 11 handlers have been added, Node will generate a possible memory leak warning.

To avoid this problem, don't re-use SftpClient objects. Generate a new SftpClient object for each connection. You can perform multiple actions with a single connection e.g. upload multiple files, download multiple files etc, but after you have called end(), you should not try to re-use the object with a further connect() call. Create a new object instead.

FAQ

Remote server drops connections with only an end event

Many SFTP servers have rate limiting protection which will drop connections once a limit has been reached. In particular, openSSH has the setting MaxStartups, which can be a tuple of the form max:drop:full where max is the maximum allowed unauthenticated connections, drop is a percentage value which specifies percentage of connections to be dropped once max connections has been reached and full is the number of connections at which point all subsequent connections will be dropped. e.g. 10:30:60 means allow up to 10 unauthenticated connections after which drop 30% of connection attempts until reaching 60 unauthenticated connections, at which time, drop all attempts.

Clients first make an unauthenticated connection to the SFTP server to begin negotiation of protocol settings (cipher, authentication method etc). If you are creating multiple connections in a script, it is easy to exceed the limit, resulting in some connections being dropped. As SSH2 only raises an 'end' event for these dropped connections, no error is detected. The ssh2-sftp-client now listens for end events during the connection process and if one is detected, will reject the connection promise.

One way to avoid this type of issue is to add a delay between connection attempts. It does not need to be a very long delay - just sufficient to permit the previous connection to be authenticated. In fact, the default setting for openSSH is 10:30:60, so you really just need to have enough delay to ensure that the 1st connection has completed authentication before the 11th connection is attempted.

How can I pass writeable stream as dst for get method?

If the dst argument passed to the get method is a writeable stream, the remote file will be piped into that writeable. If the writeable you pass in is a writeable stream created with fs.createWriteStream(), the data will be written to the file specified in the constructor call to createWriteStream().

The writeable stream can be any type of write stream. For example, the below code will convert all the characters in the remote file to upper case before it is saved to the local file system. This could just as easily be something like a gunzip stream from zlib, enabling you to decompress remote zipped files as you bring them across before saving to local file system.

'use strict';

// Example of using a writeable with get to retrieve a file.
// This code will read the remote file, convert all characters to upper case
// and then save it to a local file

const Client = require('../src/index.js');
const path = requir