getting a files from remote path to local dir using sftp in python

Question

I am trying to get files from remote path to my local dir. When i am executing the code i am getting an error. as described below.

import paramiko
import SSHLibrary
from stat import S_ISDIR
server, username, password = ('Remote ID', 'root', 'root')
ssh = paramiko.SSHClient()
paramiko.util.log_to_file("ssh.log")
ssh.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy())
ssh.connect(server, username=username, password=password)
ssh_stdin, ssh_stdout, ssh_stderr = ssh.exec_command('ls')
print "output", ssh_stdout.read() #Reading output of the executed command
error = ssh_stderr.read()
#Transfering files to and from the remote machine
sftp = ssh.open_sftp()
print sftp.getcwd()
print sftp.get_channel()
print sftp.listdir("/home")
sftp.get("/home","C:\\Users\\ShareM\\Desktop")  #---> facing problem here
sftp.close()
ssh.close()

Error:-

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\ShareM\Desktop\Automotive\devlopment\sshtesting\src\sshtest.py", line    36, in <module>
sftp.get("/home","C:\\Users\\ShareM\\Desktop")
File "build\bdist.win32\egg\paramiko\sftp_client.py", line 637, in get
IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: 'C:\\Users\\ShareM\\Desktop'

Need some help.

Solution

The problem is that sftp.get() is intended to transfer a single file not a directory. So to download entire directory you should get list of files in it and download them separately:

def download_dir(remote_dir, local_dir):
    import os
    os.path.exists(local_dir) or os.makedirs(local_dir)
    dir_items = sftp.listdir_attr(remote_dir)
    for item in dir_items:
        # assuming the local system is Windows and the remote system is Linux
        # os.path.join won't help here, so construct remote_path manually
        remote_path = remote_dir + '/' + item.filename         
        local_path = os.path.join(local_dir, item.filename)
        if S_ISDIR(item.st_mode):
            download_dir(remote_path, local_path)
        else:
            sftp.get(remote_path, local_path)


download_dir("/home","C:\\Users\\ShareM\\Desktop")

Comments

[Meric Ozcan]

so if we have a directory full of different files and folders, we need to list them all and create them in our local path. dude!

[praveen]

what does the S_ISDIR(item.st_mode) mean??

[praveen]

from stat import S_ISDIR add this import to run this method.

[ingyhere]

@praveen : It means it's a directory.

[ingyhere]

Also, it's important to separate the dir listing/stat from the actual file transfers. Some FTP servers will dump the connection unexpectedly or with too many operations.