How to SFTP upload files from PHP

Question

I'm having trouble using PHP to SFTP upload files to a remote server. When I use cURL, I'm getting the error described here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1766822/sftp-from-php-undefined-constant-curloptprotocols-and-curlprotosftp

I also tried phpseclib as suggested in:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/717854/sftp-from-within-php

But when i try phpseclib, i get these errors:

Warning: require_once(Math/BigInteger.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/john/public_html/test/Net/SSH2.php on line 53

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'Math/BigInteger.php' (include_path='.:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear') in /home/john/public_html/test/Net/SSH2.php on line 53

I then tried using system commands in php like so, but nothing happened:

<?php
echo system('sftp [email protected]');
echo system('password');
echo system('put file.csv');
?>

I also tried

<?php
$connection = ssh2_connect('shell.example.com', 22);
ssh2_auth_password($connection, 'username', 'password');

ssh2_scp_send($connection, '/local/filename', '/remote/filename', 0644);
?>

but my php server says ss2_connect is not defined.

I tried to do the following from terminal

scp file.csv [email protected]
password

But the server does not allow scp command. I do not have shell access to create ssh keys.

All i can do right now is sftp from terminal and manually upload. But I really want to automate this so a PHP website can do all this.

There aren't many tutorials on how to SFTP upload from PHP. Is it because it's a bad thing to do? If so, what should I be doing? The server I want to upload to only allows sftp connections.

Answer 1

Use the built in SSH library. Using the scp function will be easier than initiating a sftp session too.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.ssh2-scp-send.php

Answer 2

To use system command you have to:

1. Configure password-less ssh
2. Run command like scp filename1 userid@hostname:filename2, check man scp. You can do the same with sftp but with some other options

Answer 3

http://phpseclib.sourceforge.net/documentation/intro.html#intro%5Fusage%5Fcorrect

Per that, phpseclib's root directory needs to be in your include_path. From that page:

<?php set_include_path(get_include_path() . PATH_SEPARATOR . 'phpseclib');

include('Net/SFTP.php'); ?>

You should really familiarize yourself with this kind of include technique - it's pretty standard for PEAR libraries and Zend ones.