WARNING There is currently an issue with both the fastPut() and fastGet() methods when using Node versions greater than 14.0.0. This is a bug in the underlying ssh2-streams library and needs to be fixed upstream. The issue appears to be related to the concurrency operations of these two functions. A workaround is to set concurrency to 1 using the options object. Alternatively, use get() or put(), which do not use concurrency and which will provide the same performance as fastGet() or fastPut() when they are set to use a concurrency of 1. A bug report has been logged against the ssh2-streams library as issue 156.

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');
});

Version 5.x

Breaking Changes in Version 5.x

The auxList() method has been removed. This method was flagged as deprecated in version 4.x. The functionality provided by auxList() is available in list(), making auxList() unnecessary.
The realPath() method now returns '' if the path does not exist rather than throwing an exception.
Improved error handling. The ssh2 and ssh2-streams libraries use events to signal errors. Providing a clean Promise based API and managing these events can be challenging as an error event can fire at any time (including in-between the resolution of one promise and the commencement of another). As you cannot use try/catch blocks to reliably manage error events (for a similar reason - see Node's event documentation for details), a slightly more complex solution was required. See the section below on Error Event Handling for more details. In basic terms, a default handler is now used that will log the error and clear the SFTP connection if no Promise error handler has handled the error. This prevents the uncaughtException error and provides a reasonably clean way to deal with unexpected errors that fire in-between Promise execution activities.
Ignore Errors during end() processing. At least one SFTP server (Azure SFTP) seems to generate an error in response to the end() call. As end() has been called, we don't really care if an error occurs provided the connection is closed. Therefore, a new default error listener for the end() method has been added that will simply ignore any errors which occur during a call to end the connection.

Error Event Handling

Providing a clean Promise API for the SSH2 to manage basic SFTP functionality presents a couple of challenges for managing errors. The SSH2 module uses events to communicate various state changes and error conditions. These events can fire at any time.

On the client side, we wrap basic SFTP actions in Javascript Promises, allowing clients to use either the standard Promise API or async/await to model SFTP interactions. Creating an SFTP connection returns a promise, which resolves if a connection is successfully established and is rejected otherwise. Downloading a file using get() or fastGet() generates a new Promise which is either resolved, indicating file has been successfully downloaded or rejected, indicating the download failed. All pretty straight-forward.

When the Promise is created, an error event handler is added to the SFTP object to catch any errors that fire during the execution of the promise. If an error event fires, the Promise is rejected and the error returned to the client as part of the rejection. After the Promise has resolved or rejected, the error listener is removed (the error listener is specific to each promise because it needs to call the reject method associated with that promise). As a promise can only be resolved or rejected once, after the Promise has completed, the error listener is of no further use.

This all works fine when an error event fires during the execution of a Promise. However, what about outside promise execution? Consider the following flow;

You have an active SFTP connection which you use to download a file
When you make the download request, a new Promise is created which will resolve when the file is downloaded or be rejected if the download fails for some reason. The promise resolves successfully.
You start processing the data downloaded. At this point, you still have an open connection to the SFTP server, but you are not actively interacting with it. There is no active Promise in play.
The remote SFTP server resets the connection for some reason, generating a ECONNRESET error that is emitted as an error event.

What happens at this point? There is no active promise executing, so no Promise specific error handler in play. Your script is off processing the data from the previously downloaded file, so there is no currently executing try/catch block around the SFTP client object. Basically, there is nothing listening of any errors at this point. What will happen?

Well, basically, the error event will bubble up to the top level of the node process context and cause an uncaughtException error, display the error and dump a stack trace and cause the node process to exit. In basic terms, your process will crash. Not a great outcome.

There are a number of things we can do to improve the situation. However, nearly all of them have some drawbacks. We could -

Add our own error handler. The client.on() method would allow you to add your own error handler. This would provide a way to manage error events, but you want to make sure you only handle error events not handled already by the Promise error handlers. Worse yet, you cannot know before hand the processing context of your script at the point the error event fires. This means your error handling is likely to be complex and difficult to manage. Worse yet, these types of errors are quite rare in most situations and your now being required to add significant additional complexity to deal with a rare edge case. However, sometimes, you just need to deal with this sort of complexity and the client.on() method does give you that option.
Another alternative is to just add an uncaughtException handler to your Node process object. This would also prevent node from dumping the error and exiting abruptly. However, now you need to think about ALL the possible uncaughtExceptions which might happen, not just those associated with the SFTP client. Again, things are getting complicated for something which only occurs occasionally. .

What we really want is a solution which will be simple for the majority of clients, but provide additional power when needed. What we have done is add a default error handler which will only take action if no Promise error handler has fired. All the default error handler does is log the error to console.error() and set the SFTP connection to undefined so that any further attempts to use the connection will throw an error inside the Promise which attempts to use it.

The advantage of this approach is that it stops the abrupt exiting of the node script due to an uncaught exception error and provides a reasonable outcome for most use cases. For example, in the scenario outlined above, if an error event fires while your script is processing the data already downloaded, it will not impact on your script immediately. An error will be logged to console.error(), but your script will continue to run. Once you have completed processing your data, if you attempt another SFTP call, it will fail with an error about no available SFTP connections. As this will occur within the context of interacting with the SFTP server, your script can take appropriate action to resolve the issue (such as re-connecting to the server). On the other hand, if after processing the file your done and just want to end, then you can just ignore the error, perform any necessary cleanup work and exit successfully.

Technical Details

The event handlers added by each Promise are added using the prependListener() function. This ensures the handler is fired before any other error handlers which may be defined. As part of the processing, these error handler set a flag property this.errorHandled to true, indicating the error has been handled.

In addition to the Promise error handlers, there is a default error handler which will fire after any Promise error handler. The default error handler looks to see if the this.errorHandler flag is true. If it is, it knows the error has been handled and it just resets it to false, taking no other action (so taht we are ready for the next error). If the flag is false, the default handler knows it must handle the error. In this case, the handler will log the error to console.error(), will set the SFTP connection to undefined to prevent any further attempts to use it and finally, ensure the this.errorHandler flag is reset to false in preparation for the next error.

New Methods

Added the method uploadDir(). This method will upload a directory (including any subdirectories) to the remote server. Only directories and regular files are uploaded (no symbolic links, FIFOs, socket FDs etc). Will overwrite existing files or directories, but will not delete any remote files or directories.
Added the method downloadDir(). This method will download a directory (including any subdirectories) to the local file system. Only directories and regular files are downloaded (no symbolic links, FIFOs, socket FDs etc).. Will overwrite existing files or directories, but will not delete any local files in the directories.
Added the method posixRename(). This method will use the POSIX atomic rename openSSH extension. As this is an extension to the SFTP protocol, not all servers will support this operation.

Version 5.0.1

The error checking was a little too stringent. The use of exist() to test for file types had a problem when the user does not have read/execute rights on the directory. Replaced with stat() method, which should avoid this issue.

Version 5.0.2

Fix error in local directory tests due to missing await statement.
Fix path handling under win32. Paths were not being parsed correctly due to the use of path.posix.parse() instead of path.parse().

Version 5.1.0

Add missing connection check in end() method
Add debugging support. Now adding a debug property to the connection configuration object will enable debugging. The value of the debug property should be a function which accepts a single string argument. Typically, this function will send the value passed in to stderr or a file.
Fix bug in checkRemotePath() relating to poor path specifications where you cannot determine parent directory.

Version 5.1.1

Bug fix for unexpected close of connections. It would seem that a connections can be unexpectedly closed without an accompanying error event. As methods only looked for error events, the method promise wold never fulfil and the method would appear to hang. Have now added close event handlers to each method that will reject the promise if the connection is closed unexpectedly.
Missing return statement in connect method would result in the connect method attempting to re-connect again after it had reached maximum connect retries. Added the missing return statement.
Added some more troubleshooting documentation. Numerous issues have been raised that turn out to be due to client code failing to return Promises inside promise chains. Common symptom is what appears to be truncated file upload/download. What is really happening is that the end method is being called before the transfer has completed.

Version 5.1.2

Mainly a bug fix. We needed to add back a global close listener to ensure the sftp object is unset whenever a close event occurs. As close events can occur outside main method calls, only having method based listeners was not sufficient.
Also added a utils.dumpListeners() method, useful when debugging issues with listener 'leakage' due to failure to remove listeners when no longer required.

Version 5.1.3

Fix issue with permissions for writing to root directory
Cleanup tests to use less connections and eliminate need for test delays
Bumped some dependencies to latest versions

Version 5.2.0

Add posixRename() method. This is an openssh extension added in openssh v4.8 and will only work on servers which support this extension.conflict
Bumped through2 dependency version to 4.0.2

Version 5.2.1

Move some dev dependencies from dependencies to devDependencies.

Documentation

The connection options are the same as those offered by the underlying SSH2 module. For full details, please see SSH2 client methods

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

Specifying Paths

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 filename. 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 filename 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) ===> 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.

Constructor Arguments
- name: string. An optional name string used in error messages

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) ===> SFTPstream

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

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.

// 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
};

// rarely used options

let advancedOpts {
  localAddress,
  localPort,
  hostHash,
  hostVerifier,
  agentForward,
  localHostname,
  localUsername,
  tryKeyboard,
  authHandler,
  keepaliveInterval,
  keepaliveCountMax,
  sock,
  algorithms,
  compress
};

Example Use

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

list(path, pattern) ==> 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
pattern: (optional) {string|RegExp} A pattern used to filter the items included in the returned array. Pattern can be a simple glob-style string or a regular expression. Defaults to /.*/.

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);
  });

Return Objects

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

{
  type: // file type(-, d, l)
  name: // file name
  size: // file size
  modifyTime: // file timestamp of modified time
  accessTime: // file timestamp of access time
  rights: {
    user:
    group:
    other:
  },
  owner: // user ID
  group: // group ID
}

Pattern Filter

The filter options can be a regular expression (most powerful option) or a simple glob-like string where * will match any number of characters, e.g.
```
foo* => foo, foobar, foobaz
*bar => bar, foobar, tabbar
*oo* => foo, foobar, look, book
```
The glob-style matching is very simple. In most cases, you are best off using a real regular expression which will allow you to do more powerful matching and anchor matches to the beginning/end of the string etc.

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.

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

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
};

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 your 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).

Options

The options object can be used to pass options to the underlying readStream used to read the data from the remote server.
```
{
  flags: 'r',
  encoding: null,
  handle: null,
  mode: 0o666,
  autoClose: true
}
```
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.

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.

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)

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.

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 write stream used in sending the data to the remote server (see below).

Options

The following options are supported;
```
{
  flags: 'w',  // 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. However, using utf-8 encoding for binary files will often result in data corruption.

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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

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

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) ==> string

Delete a file on the remote server.

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

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.

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 filesystems 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 sSFTP 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

Example Use

let path = '/path/to/remote/file.txt';
let ndwMode = 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. Returns '' if the path is not valid.

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) ==> 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 to. 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 lisener using the on() method.

srcDir: A local file path specified as a string
dstDir: A remote file path specified as a string

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;
} finally {
  client.end();
}
    }

    main()
.then(msg => {
  console.log(msg);
})
.catch(err => {
  console.log(`main error: ${err.message}`);
});

downloadDir(srcDir, dstDir) ==> string

Download 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 emites 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.

srcDir: A remote file path specified as a string
dstDir: A local file path specified as a string

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}`);
  });

end() ==> boolean

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

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. Boolean argument which is true when the socket was closed due to errors.

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. If the event type is close, the listener should accept one argument of a boolean type, which will be true when the client connection was closed due to errors.
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.

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 you pass writable 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 = require('path');
const fs = require('fs');
const through = require('through2');

const config = {
  host: 'arch-vbox',
  port: 22,
  username: 'tim',
  password: 'xxxx'
};

const sftp = new Client();
const remoteDir = '/home/tim/testServer';

function toupper() {
  return through(function(buf, enc, next) {
    next(null, buf.toString().toUpperCase());
  });
}

sftp
  .connect(config)
  .then(() => {
    return sftp.list(remoteDir);
  })
  .then(data => {
    // list of files in testServer
    console.dir(data);
    let remoteFile = path.join(remoteDir, 'test.txt');
    let upperWtr = toupper();
    let fileWtr = fs.createWriteStream(path.join(__dirname, 'loud-text.txt'));
    upperWtr.pipe(fileWtr);
    return sftp.get(remoteFile, upperWtr);
  })
  .then(() => {
    return sftp.end();
  })
  .catch(err => {
    console.error(err.message);
  });

How can I upload files without having to specify a password?

There are a couple of ways to do this. Essentially, you want to setup SSH keys and use these for authentication to the remote server.

One solution, provided by @KalleVuorjoki is to use the SSH agent process. Note: SSH_AUTH_SOCK is normally created by your OS when you load the ssh-agent as part of the login session.

let sftp = new Client();
sftp.connect({
  host: 'YOUR-HOST',
  port: 'YOUR-PORT',
  username: 'YOUR-USERNAME',
  agent: process.env.SSH_AUTH_SOCK
}).then(() => {
  sftp.fastPut(/* ... */)
}

Another alternative is to just pass in the SSH key directly as part of the configuration.

let sftp = new Client();
sftp.connect({
  host: 'YOUR-HOST',
  port: 'YOUR-PORT',
  username: 'YOUR-USERNAME',
  privateKey: fs.readFileSync('/path/to/ssh/key')
}).then(() => {
  sftp.fastPut(/* ... */)
}

How can I connect through a Socks Proxy

This solution was provided by @jmorino.

import { SocksClient } from 'socks';
import SFTPClient from 'ssh2-sftp-client';

const host = 'my-sftp-server.net';
const port = 22; // default SSH/SFTP port on remote server

// connect to SOCKS 5 proxy
const { socket } = await SocksClient.createConnection({
  proxy: {
    host: 'my.proxy', // proxy hostname
    port: 1080, // proxy port
    type: 5, // for SOCKS v5
  },
  command: 'connect',
  destination: { host, port } // the remote SFTP server
});

const client = new SFTPClient();
client.connect({
  host,
  sock: socket, // pass the socket to proxy here (see ssh2 doc)
  username: '.....',
  privateKey: '.....'
})

// client is connected

Timeout while waiting for handshake or handshake errors

Some users have encountered the error 'Timeout while waiting for handshake' or 'Handshake failed, no matching client->server ciphers. This is often due to the client not having the correct configuration for the transport layer algorithms used by ssh2. One of the connect options provided by the ssh2 module is algorithm, which is an object that allows you to explicitly set the key exchange, ciphers, hmac and compression algorithms as well as server host key used to establish the initial secure connection. See the SSH2 documentation for details. Getting these parameters correct usually resolves the issue.

Examples

I have started collecting example scripts in the example directory of the repository. These are mainly scripts I have put together in order to investigate issues or provide samples for users. They are not robust, lack adequate error handling and may contain errors. However, I think they are still useful for helping developers see how the module and API can be used.

Change Log

v5.2.1 (Prod Version)

Move some dependencies into dev-Dependencies

v5.2.0

Add new method posixRename() which uses the openSSH POSIX rename extension.

v5.1.3

Fix bug when writing to root directory and failure due to not being able to determine parent
Refactor some tests to eliminate need to have artificial delays between tests
Bumped some dependency versions to latest version

v5.1.2

Added back global close handler
Added dumpListeners() method

v5.1.1

Added separate close handlers to each method.
Added missing return statement in connect method
Added additional troubleshooting documentation for common errors.

v5.1.0

Fix bug in checkRemotePath() relating to handling of badly specified paths (issue #213)
Added additional debugging support
Add missing test for valid connection in end() method.
Bump ssh2 version to v0.8.8

v5.0.2

Fix bugs related to win32 platform and local tests for valid directories
Fix problem with parsing of file paths

v5.0.1

Turn down error checking to be less stringent and handle situations where user does not have read permission on parent directory.

v5.0.0

Added two new methods uploadDir() and downloadDir()
Removed deprecated auxList() method
Improved error message consistency
Added additional error checking to enable more accurate and useful error messages.
Added default error handler to deal with event errors which fire outside of active SftpClient methods (i.e. connection unexpectedly reset by remote host).
Modified event handlers to ensure that only event handlers added by the module are removed by the module (users now responsible for removing any custom event handlers they add).
Module error handlers added using prependListener to ensure they are called before any additional custom handlers added by client code.
Any error events fired during an end() call are now ignored.

v4.3.1

Updated end() method to resolve once close event fires
Added errorListener to error event in each promise to catch error events and reject the promise. This should resolve the issue of some error events causing uncaughtException erros and causing the process to exit.

v4.3.0

Ensure errors include an err.code property and pass through the error code from the originating error
Change tests for error type to use error.code instead of matching on error.message.

v4.2.4

Bumped ssh2 to v0.8.6
Added exists() usage example to examples directory
Clarify documentation on get() method

v4.2.3

Fix bug in exist() where tests on root directory returned false
Minor documentation fixes
Clean up mkdir example

v4.2.2

Minor documentation fixes
Added additional examples in the example directory

v4.2.1

Remove default close listener. changes in ssh2 API removed the utility of a default close listener
Fix path handling. Under mixed environments (where client platform and server platform were different i.e. one windows the other unix), path handling was broken due tot he use of path.join().
Ensure error messages include path details. Instead of errors such as "No such file" now report "No such file /path/to/missing/file" to help with debugging

v4.2.0

Work-around for SSH2 end event bug
Added ability to set client name in constructor method
Added additional error checking to prevent connect() being called on already connected client
Added additional examples in example directory

v4.1.0

move end() call to resolve into close hook
Prevent put() and get() from creating empty files in destination when unable to read source
Expand tests for operations when lacking required permissions
Add additional data checks for append()
- Verify file exists
- Verify file is writeable
- Verify file is a regular file
Fix handling of relative paths
Add realPath() method
Add cwd() method

v4.0.4

Minor documentation fix
Fix return value from get()

v4.0.3

Fix bug in mkdir() relating to handling of relative paths
Modify exists() to always return 'd' if path is '.'

v4.0.2

Fix some minor packaging issues

v4.0.0

Remove support for node < 8.x
Fix connection retry feature
sftp connection object set to null when 'end' signal is raised
Removed 'connectMethod' argument from connect method.
Refined adding/removing of listeners in connect() and end() methods to enable errors to be adequately caught and reported.
Deprecate auxList() and add pattern/regexp filter option to list()
Refactored handling of event signals to provide better feedback to clients
Removed pointless 'permissions' property from objects returned by stat() (same as mode property). Added additional properties describing the type of object.
Added the removeListener() method to compliment the existing on() method.

Older Versions

v2.5.2

Repository transferred to theophilusx
Fix error in package.json pointing to wrong repository

v2.5.1

Apply 4 pull requests to address minor issues prior to transfer

v2.5.0

v2.4.3

merge #108, #110
- fix connect promise if connection ends

v2.4.2

merge #105
- fix windows path

v2.4.1

merge pr #99, #100
- bug fix

v2.4.0

Requires node.js v7.5.0 or above.
merge pr #97, thanks for @theophilusx
- Remove emitter.maxListener warnings
- Upgraded ssh2 dependency from 0.5.5 to 0.6.1
- Enhanced error messages to provide more context and to be more consistent
- re-factored test
- Added new 'exists' method and re-factored mkdir/rmdir

v2.3.0

add: stat method
add fastGet and fastPut method.
fix: mkdir file exists decision logic

v3.0.0 – deprecate this version

change: sftp.get will return chunk not stream anymore
fix: get readable not emitting data events in node 10.0.0

v2.1.1

add: event listener. doc
add: get or put method add extra options pr#52

v2.0.1

add: chmod method pr#33
update: upgrade ssh2 to V0.5.0 pr#30
fix: get method stream error reject unwork #22
fix: return Error object on promise rejection pr#20

v1.1.0

fix: add encoding control support for binary stream

v1.0.5:

fix: multi image upload
change: remove this.client.sftp to connect function

Troubleshooting

The ssh2-sftp-client module is essentially a wrapper around the ssh2 and ssh2-streams modules, providing a higher level promise based API. When you run into issues, it is important to try and determine where the issue lies - either in the ssh2-sftp-client module or the underlying ssh2 and ssh2-streams modules. One way to do this is to first identify a minimal reproducible example which reproduces the issue. Once you have that, try to replicate the functionality just using the ssh2 and ssh2-streams modules. If the issue still occurs, then you can be fairly confident it is something related to those later 2 modules and therefore and issue which should be referred to the maintainer of that module.

The ssh2 and ssh2-streams modules are very solid, high quality modules with a large user base. Most of the time, issues with those modules are due to client misconfiguration. It is therefore very important when trying to diagnose an issue to also check the documentation for both ssh2 and ssh2-streams. While these modules have good defaults, the flexibility of the ssh2 protocol means that not all options are available by default. You may need to tweak the connection options, ssh2 algorithms and ciphers etc for some remote servers. The documentation for both the ssh2 and ssh2-streams module is quite comprehensive and there is lots of valuable information in the issue logs.

If you run into an issue which is not repeatable with just the ssh2 and ssh2-streams modules, then please log an issue against the ssh2-sftp-client module and I will investigate. Please note the next section on logging issues.

Note also that in the repository there are two useful directories. The first is the examples directory, which contain some examples of using ssh2-sftp-client to perform common tasks. A few minutes reviewing these examples can provide that additional bit of detail to help fix any problems you are encountering.

The second directory is the tools directory. I have some very basic simple scripts in this directory which perform basic tasks using only the ssh2 and ssh2-streams modules (no ssh2-sftp-client module). These can be useful when trying to determine if the issue is with the underlying ssh2 and ssh2-streams modules.

Common Errors

There are some common errors people tend to make when using Promises or Asyc/Await. These are by far the most common problem found in issues logged against this module. Please check for some of these before logging your issue.

Not returning the promise in a `then()` block

All methods in ssh2-sftp-client return a Promise. This means methods are executed asynchrnously. When you call a method inside the then() block of a promise chain, it is critical that you return the Promise that call generates. Failing to do this will result in the then() block completing and your code starting execution of the next then(), catch() or finally() block before your promise has been fulfilled. For exmaple, the following will not do what you expect

sftp.connect(config)
  .then(() => {
    sftp.fastGet('foo.txt', 'bar.txt');
  }).then(rslt => {
    console.log(rslt);
    sftp.end();
  }).catch(e => {
    console.error(e.message);
  });

In the above code, the sftp.end() method will almost certainly be called before sftp.gastGet() has been fulfilled (unless the foo.txt file is really small!). In fact, the whole promise chain will complete and exit even before the sftp.end() call has been fulfilled. The correct code would be something like

sftp.connect(config)
  .then(() => {
    return sftp.fastGet('foo.txt', 'bar.txt');
  }).then(rslt => {
    console.log(rslt);
    return sftp.end();
  }).catch(e => {
    console.error(e.message);
  });

Note the return statements. These ensure that the Promise returned by the client method is returned into the promise chain. It will be this promise the next block in the chain will wait on to be fulfilled before the next block is executed. Without the return statement, that block will return the default promise for that block, which essentially says this block has been fulfilled. What you really want is the promise which says your sftp client method call has been fulfilled.

A common symptom of this type of error is for file uploads or download to fail to complete or for data in those files to be truncated. What is happening is that the connection is being ended before the transfer has completed.

Mixing Promise Chains and Async/Await

Another common error is to mix Promise chains and async/await calls. This is rarely a great idea. While you can do this, it tends to create complicated and difficult to maintain code. Select one approach and stick with it. Both approaches are functionally equivalent, so there is no reason to mix up the two paradigms. My personal preference would be to use async/await as I think that is more natural for most developers. For example, the following is more complex and difficult to follow than necessary (and has a bug!)

sftp.connect(config)
  .then(() => {
    return sftp.cwd();
  }).then(async (d) => {
    console.log(`Remote directory is ${d}`);
    try {
      await sftp.fastGet(`${d}/foo.txt`, `./bar.txt`);
    }.catch(e => {
      console.error(e.message);
    });
  }).catch(e => {
    console.error(e.message);
  }).finally(() => {
    sftp.end();
  });

The main bug in the above code is the then() block is not returning the Promise generated by the call to sftp.fastGet(). What it is actually returning is a fulfilled promise which says the then() block has been run (note that the await'ed promise is not being returned and is therefore outside the main Promise chain). As a result, the finally() block will be executed before the await promise has been fulfilled.

Using async/await inside the promise chain has created unnecessary complexity and leads to incorrect assumptions regarding how the code will execute. A quick glance at the code is likely to give the impression that execution will wait for the sftp.fastGet() call to be fulfilled before continuing. This is not the case. The code would be more clearly expressed as either

sftp.connect(config)
  .then(() => {
    return sftp.cwd();
  }).then(d => {
    console.log(`remote dir ${d}`);
    return sftp.fastGet(`${d}/foot.txt`, 'bar.txt');
  }).catch(e => {
    console.error(e.message);
  }).finally(() => {
    return sftp.end();
  });

or, using async/await

async function doSftp() {
  try {
    let sftp = await sftp.connect(conf);
    let d = await sftp.cwd();
    console.log(`remote dir is ${d}`);
    await sftp.fastGet(`${d}/foo.txt`, 'bat.txt');
  } catch (e) {
    console.error(e.message);
  } finally () {
    await sftp.end();
  }
}

Try/catch and Error Handlers

Another common error is to try and use a try/catch block to catch event signals, such as an error event. In general, you cannot use try/catch blocks for asynchronous code and expect errors to be caught by the catch block. Handling errors in asynchronous code is one of the key reasons we now have the Promise and async/await frameworks.

The basic problem is that the try/catch block will have completed execution before the asynchronous code has completed. If the asynchronous code has not compleed, then there is a potential for it to raise an error. However, as the try/catch block has already completed, there is no catch waiting to catch the error. It will bubble up and probably result in your script exiting with an uncaught exception error.

Error events are essentially asynchronous code. You don't know when such events will fire. Therefore, you cannot use a try/catch block to catch such event errors. Even creating an error handler which then throws an exception won't help as the key problem is that your try/catch block has already executed. There are a number of alternative ways to deal with this situation. However, the key symptom is that you see occasional uncaught error exceptions that cause your script to exit abnormally despite having try/catch blocks in your script. What you need to do is look at your code and find where errors are raised asynchronously and use an event handler or some other mechanism to manage any errors raised.

Debugging Support

You can add a debug property to the config object passed in to connect() to turn on debugging. This will generate quite a lot of output. The value of the property should be a function which accepts a single string argument. For example;

config.debug = msg => {
  console.error(msg);
};

Enabling debugging can generate a lot of output. If you use console.error() as the output (as in the example above), you can redirect the output to a file using shell redirection e.g.

node script.js 2> debug.log

Logging Issues

Please log an issue for all bugs, questions, feature and enhancement requests. Please ensure you include the module version, node version and platform.

I am happy to try and help diagnose and fix any issues you encounter while using the ssh2-sftp-client module. However, I will only put in effort if you are prepared to put in the effort to provide the information necessary to reproduce the issue. Things which will help

Node version you are using
Version of ssh2-sftp-client you are using
Platform your client is running on (Linux, macOS, Windows)
Platform and software for the remote SFTP server when possible
Example of your code. By far, the most common issue is incorrect use of the module API. Example code can usually result in such issues being resolved very quickly.

Perhaps the best assistance is a minimal reproducible example of the issue. Once the issue can be readily reproduced, it can usually be fixed very quickly.

Pull Requests

Pull requests are always welcomed. However, please ensure your changes pass all tests and if your adding a new feature, that tests for that feature are included. Likewise, for new features or enhancements, please include any relevant documentation updates.

This module will adopt a standard semantic versioning policy. Please indicate in your pull request what level of change it represents i.e.

Major: Change to API or major change in functionality which will require an increase in major version number.
Minor: Minor change, enhancement or new feature which does not change existing API and will not break existing client code.
Bug Fix: No change to functionality or features. Simple fix of an existing bug.

Contributors

This module was initially written by jyu213. On August 23rd, 2019, theophilusx took over responsibility for maintaining this module. A number of other people have contributed to this module, but until now, this was not tracked. My intention is to credit anyone who contributes going forward.

Thanks to the following for their contributions -

jyu213: Original author
theophilusx: Current maintainer
henrytk: Documentation fix
waldyrious: Documentation fixes
james-pellow: Cleanup and fix for connect method logic
jhorbulyk: Contributed posixRename() functionality

Keywords

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Package last updated on 21 Jul 2020

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