Software Tips

Every week, I need to download a database file from my server as a backup copy. Instead of manually connecting to the ftp server every week, browsing to the database folder, downloading (waiting…), moving and renaming it appropriately, I’ll show you how I automated this whole thing using a batch file and an ftp script file.

Windows bundles an ftp program (ftp.exe) with its system files. The ftp program accepts a script file as part of its command line parameters.

Here is the sample script file (call it ftpscript.txt)

(ftpusername)
(ftppassword)
bin
hash
get “httpdocs/db/mydatabase.sql” “mydatabase.sql”

Replace (ftpusername) and (ftppassword) with your own ftp account’s username password. The 4th line “hash” displays the download progress using # characters. The 5th line “get” downloads the database file to the local directory from where the script is being executed.

Now we will write a batch file which will run the ftp command with the script file.

Here is the sample batch file (call it downloaddb.bat)

D:
cd “D:\Website\www\db\”
For /f “tokens=2-4 delims=/ ” %%a in (‘date /t’) do (set todaysdate=%%c%%a%%b)
del mydatabase_%todaysdate%.sql
ren mydatabase.sql mydatabase_%todaysdate%.sql
ftp -s:ftpscript.txt ftpserveraddress.com

In the above code we go to the local database folder, generate today’s date, append today’s date to the previously downloaded database and then run the script. Replace the ftpserveraddress.com with your own ftp server’s address.

Every time we run the batch file, it will rename the previously downloaded file (with today’s date) and download the new file.

Thanks.