“failed to open stream: FTP server reports 550” wh

Question

In PHP, you have wrappers for ftp and ftps to allow you access files on an FTP using fopen.

I want to use the wrapper to download a file as a stream.

My simplified code:

// eg. $url = "ftp://username:[e-mail]/directory-with-dash/file.mp3";
$url = 'ftp://' . urlencode($username) . ':' . urlencode($password) . '@' . $server . $path . '/' . $filename;
$ctx = stream_context_create(array('ftp' => array('resume_pos' => 0)));
$fin = fopen($url, 'r', false, $ctx);

Error:

Warning: fopen(ftp://[e-mail]/directory-with-dash/file.mp3): failed to open stream: FTP server reports 550 /directory-with-dash/file.mp3: The system cannot find the path specified. in /var/www/ftp.php on line 4

More Info:

• The same url works fine when used with wget on the same machine.
• Using PHP's FTP extension to download files works fine
• FTP server responds with 220 Microsoft FTP Service and 215 Windows_NT
• FTP server can handle passive mode
• Using filesize($url); results in Warning: filesize(): stat failed for...
• allow_url_fopen setting is On
• The same code worked fine against a different FTP-server, 215 UNIX Type: L8

What might be causing the problem?

Edit:

I have noticed that the Microsoft FTP Service doesn't place you in the root folder when you connect to the FTP, but in a subfolder:

/username

This subfolder must not be in the URL when you use wget or a web browser:

ftp://username:[e-mail]/username/directory-with-dash/file.mp3 // Not available in Chrome ftp://username:[e-mail]/directory-with-dash/file.mp3 // Works fine in Chrome

I have tried both urls in the PHP-code, but I get the same error still. (I typed it wrong)

Answer 1

The problem was caused by the FTP server not connecting to root (/) but rather to a subfolder (/username).

Unlike Chrome and wget, the FTP wrapper in PHP seems to require to have the full path and not the relative path:

For Chrome, wget, etc.:

ftp://username:[e-mail]/directory-with-dash/file.mp3

For PHP's FTP wrapper:

ftp://username:[e-mail]/username/directory-with-dash/file.mp3