Tools to help with editing a remote web application

Question

I often have nothing more than an FTP access to a server on which the application is placed.

What I usually use now is "Keeping remote directory up to date" feature of WinSCP. Files of the local copy (in theory at least) keep being uploaded to a remote server as soon as they get saved and then all I need is to refresh a page in a browser to see the result (sometimes clearing session variables beforehand).

WinSCP's bugginess and FTP protocol deficiencies aside, I feel this may be somewhat primitive approach and perphaps there are better ways to get a task like that done.

Answer 1

I have a similar situation. I used to use Dreamweaver for web development but have switched to other tools that do not have the file sync features of Dreamweaver.

I have recently discovered BeyondCompare, which is a diff/merge tool that works really well for comparing local and remote directory trees. It is highly configurable and has a sync mode as well. Very nice.

Answer 2

If you are using Maven to automate your build I would recommend you use the Cargo plugin to deploy your application to the server.

If you cannot use your container's deployer you can still use Maven (with a bit more work) to deploy your web application using SCP, SFTP, FTP or even WebDAV via Wagon.