Custom Directory Parsing

MOVEit Central provides a high degree of flexibility for downloading from unusual FTP and SSH servers.

When downloading from an FTP server, an automated FTP client must request a directory listing and "parse" the results in order to determine the names, date stamps, sizes, and other information about the files on the server. A problem faced by any automated FTP client is that there is no official standard format for this information. Each FTP server vendor chooses its own format for this information. As a result, there are scores of different and incompatible formats. FTP clients must make sense of these many different types of directory listings. SSH clients face a similar situation, although the problem is not as severe.

MOVEit Central provides a great deal of flexibility in dealing with this unfortunate situation by providing several different options:

• Automatic recognition of common servers. By default, MOVEit Central will automatically recognize and parse directory listings from the most common types of FTP and SSH servers, including Windows, UNIX, Novell, MVS, Unisys, and Van Dyke.
• "Blind" downloads. If the name of the file is known in advance, you can instruct MOVEit Central to download the file without requesting a directory listing, bypassing the problem altogether.
• Column-based custom parsing. If the directory listing has a simple tabular format that can be described by rows and columns, you can specify these parameters in the host definition.
• Directory parsing script. For the ultimate in flexibility, you can write a script in VBScript to parse a directory listing. Literally any format can be handled this way.

The options below are configured in the host's Advanced Options dialog, under Custom Parsing.