How to provide username and password within FTP URL for direct download in a browser?

Question

Modern browsers like Chrome and Firefox can handle FTP downloads:

ftp://my-ftp.com/my-file.csv

I want to share a link to another person and I don't want them to enter a username and password through a prompt.

I am aware of the security impact, yet in this case ease of use has precedence. I wonder if there is an option to provide the credentials within the FTP URL directly.

Solution 1

You can provide the credentials to the URL like so:

username:password@host

Your example would become:

ftp://username:[email protected]/my-file.csv

---

You will run into problems if the user name contains invalid symbols such as @:

 ftp://usern@me:[email protected]/my-file.csv

For such a download, I had to fallback on using a client allowing the symbol, e.g. FileZilla.

Solution 2

Notable exception (for HTTP and HTTPS protocols) is IE:

Internet Explorer versions 3.0 to 6.0 support the following syntax for HTTP or HTTPS URLs: http(s)://username:password@server/resource.ext You can use this URL syntax to automatically send user information to a Web site that supports the basic authentication method.

(Source). They do not support it for security concerns:

A malicious user might use this URL syntax to create a hyperlink that appears to open a legitimate Web site but actually opens a deceptive (spoofed) Web site. For example, the following URL appears to open http://www.wingtiptoys.com but actually opens http://example.com: http://[email protected]

Comments

[k0pernikus]

Does ie handle FTP at all?

[mvw]

ftp.freebsd.org seems to work (IE11).