Looping FTP in a bash script

Question

I need to constantly send files automatically over FTP. Originally I just had a script that fed into stdin for FTP, but realized that for each time I do this, I need to close then reopen the connection between server and client. Reconnection takes more time than actually sending the file. I've tried avoiding this by making a separate script to open the connection and running a script to send the file in a loop.

Here's the issue: after running the connection script, ftp automatically disconnects. Here's the connection script.

#!/bin/bash

HOST='192.168.1.2'
USER='user'
PASSWD='passwd'

echo "open $HOST
user $USER $PASSWD
ascii" > /tmp/ftp.$$

ftp -ivn < /tmp/ftp.$$ >> ftplog.txt
rm /tmp/ftp.$$

and this is the script to send the file.

#!/bin/bash
echo "put localfile.txt remotfile.txt" > /tmp/ftp.$$
ftp -ivn < /tmp/ftp.$$ >> ftplog.txt
rm /tmp/ftp.$$

The connection script opens the connection fine but closes it again once it runs. Any way to avoid this?

I should clarify that I am not uploading a list of files, but a single file that is updated by another script and is sent after update. This one file is sent over and over in as close to real time as possible.

Answer 1

you can upoload all files in a folder with the following script

#!/bin/bash

HOST='your host'
USER="your user"
PASSWD="pass"
REMOTEPATH='/upload'

function usage(){
    echo "Usage $0 <folder>"
}

function ftp(){
  ftp -n $HOST <<END_SCRIPT
  quote USER $USER
  quote PASS $PASSWD
  cd $REMOTEPATH
  lcd $1
  mput *
  quit
  END_SCRIPT
}

if [[ $# -ne 1 ]]
    then
        usage
    else
        ftp $1 
        exit 0
fi