Getting files info (accessed/modified dates) from FTP server (C#)

Question

I'm creating a program which downloads files off various types of servers, such as network paths or HTTP servers, based upon criteria. So far I have it working based upon a regex, but I'd also like it to find files newer (last accessed, modified or created) than a given date. This is easy in the network path type because I can access the FileInfo for that file, but all I have in my FTP server is a 'line' string which obviously just holds the file name.

Is it easy/possible to access the last modified/accesesed/created dates for a file on an FTP server in C#?

Answer 1

Unfortunately FTP provides only limited information about the remote file. With default LIST command you get OS-specific response where one date is usually present (this is usually last modification time). With MLST/MLSD extension commands you get machine-parsable response string but also with just one time.

The exact way to get the date depends on what component or class you use to access the FTP server.

If you need to get more than one date (eg. date of creation and last access), and you can go SFTP route, I'd recommend using SFTP instead.

Answer 2

You could use a third party library such as edtFTP to connect to the FTP server and inspect the last modified/created (not sure if you can get the the last accessed timestamp) timestamps. Its quite an easy library to use: