Serverside implementation of FTP in Java

Question

Hi,

I want to build an FTP server that has no actual files in the background. Rather I want the files uploaded to it being immediately processed by my backend. The file listing of the upload directories should contain those files that are not yet processed. Deletion or moving should not be possible.

Also, on the download side I want to present those files that I'm able to deliver. But files shall be created - again by the backend - on demand.

Since I don't want to reimplement FTP, does anyone know a Java library that helps implementing the server side of the FTP protocol, that is customizable as I need it to be?

I have looked into the always helpful Jakarta Commons but they seem to focus on the client side.

Thanks
Mike
[;-)

Answer 1

Here's a couple which might be helpful:
http://drftpd.org/
http://mina.apache.org/ftpserver/

Since you do not actually want the files to be transfered and listed in a usual FTP behaviors, you'll need to intercept the codes of how the files are listed and retrieved by the clients.

Answer 2

Maybe you can use Apache FtpServer.

The Apache FtpServer is a 100% pure Java FTP server. It's designed to be a complete and portable FTP server engine solution based on currently available open protocols. FtpServer can be run standalone as a Windows service or Unix/Linux daemon, or embedded into a Java application. We also provide support for integration within Spring applications and provide our releases as OSGi bundles.

Answer 3

Check out http://mina.apache.org/ftpserver/.

The Apache FtpServer is a 100% pure Java FTP server. It's designed to be a complete and portable FTP server engine solution based on currently available open protocols. FtpServer can be run standalone as a Windows service or Unix/Linux daemon, or embedded into a Java application. We also provide support for integration within Spring applications and provide our releases as OSGi bundles.

The default network support is based on Apache MINA, a high performance asynchronous IO library. Using MINA, FtpServer can scale to a large number of concurrent users.

Answer 4

Hi DerMike,

Did you managed to work with Apache FTP Server? I also would like to implement FTP server on top of some logical layer which works on top of DB.

thanks, Oleg.