sftp: get file by mtime

Question

Objective:

Connect to sftp server with very simple script using -b option, cd to directory and get file with the latest modified time or created time.

I can connect and download *.csv but that may download a dozen; I can provide part of the file name but that changes monthly, so I think the best solution is mtime.

Thanks!

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 14 '15 at 18:33

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If you take a look to sftp manual (sftp(1)) you can see there is a way to perform a ls sorting by mtime (ls -t). So you can run sftp twice:

First time you perform a ls -lt (or ls -lrt to reverse order) redirect the output to a file and just read the last line of listing, so you have the filename, and on the second round you can specify the file to download.

edited May 14 '15 at 18:33

Registered User

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answered May 14 '15 at 05:20

alphamikevictor

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Make sense but how do I re-direct output? ls -lrt > `alphamikevictor Can't ls: "/usr/home/aaa/u/zzz/>" not found` – Registered User May 14 '15 at 05:26
When you launch the SFTP `sftp -b listfiles.sftp > files_listed.log` (being listfiles.sftp your batch file) – alphamikevictor May 14 '15 at 08:48
Just linking to a similiar question I didn't find last night: http://serverfault.com/questions/507394/automatically-retrieve-a-specific-file-via-sftp – Registered User May 15 '15 at 05:26

sftp: get file by mtime

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