Fetch Softworks

FTP via HTTP? (5 posts)

• Started 21 years ago by skunkworks
• Latest reply 21 years ago from Jim Matthews

• skunkworks Member

  Hi,

  I have an interesting but I'm sure not unusual problem.

  I sit behind a corporate firewall which allows HTTP through the proxy (with proxy username and password) but not FTP (directly).

  You can indirectly FTP using a web browser (view directories, download files) but, with IE5, you can't UPLOAD files.

  Is there a way of configuring Fetch to make it act like it is a web browser doing the FTP? If not, is there an 'HTTP' option you could add to the FTP firewall settings in the next Fetch version?

  None of the firewall settings in Fetch seemed to emulate HTTP - the external FTP sites were always unreachable.

  Thanks.

  Posted 21 years ago #

• Jim Matthews Administrator

  No, there's no way to get Fetch to use HTTP rather than FTP. The main reason is that while HTTP can emulate one function of FTP -- downloading files -- it can't be a substitute for everything that FTP does.

  Sorry,

  Jim Matthews
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 21 years ago #

• skunkworks Member

  HTTP can support a number of FTP functions - not just downloading. Netscape supports uploading files (I know because I did it this morning), and I've read that some PC versions of IE also supported FTP file deletion.

  I've written FTP and HTTP clients in perl - it's not that hard to do.

  But what I'm missing is the correct syntax for doing FTP requests via HTTP. I haven't been able to get that working despite reading RFC 2068. Clearly it is possible since current web browsers do it.

  I thought it would be possible to get Fetch to have an HTTP option for FTP and at least support the subset of FTP commands which are possible. Thanks.

  Posted 21 years ago #

• skunkworks Member

  I've done a bit more reading - I've now got my perl script to work. FTP via HTTP supports:

  • file download (GET method)
  • file upload (PUT method)
  • file deletion (DELETE method).

  See RFC2068 (HTTP 1.1) and RFC1738 (URLs).

  The OPTIONS method supposedly tells you what methods the server supports (eg some won't support DELETE, some won't support PUT), but not all FTP servers accessed via HTTP honour the OPTIONS method (tsk, tsk).

  I just think it would be neat if Fetch supported the above FTP via HTTP methods for us poor souls behind corporate firewalls.

  Posted 21 years ago #

• Jim Matthews Administrator

  Actually it isn't the FTP servers that don't support OPTIONS (OPTIONS isn't part of the FTP protocol), it's the HTTP-to-FTP proxy servers.

  Thanks for the information. Unfortunately, to have Fetch work via HTTP the way it does with FTP directly the proxy servers would need to also support downloading file lists, renaming and moving files, setting file permissions, etc.

  Jim Matthews
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 21 years ago #