JG

BTW, I noticed that echo on Windows doesn’t work the same as echo in GNU bash. That is, echo on Windows does not care about the quotation delimiters and it will copy them and the space between the quote and the right angle bracket into the output file. Eww. So my post is technically wrong about filling in that configuration file, but I hope it is understandable in any case.

Either way, the code in question isn’t quite “done” simply because it hasn’t had people beating on it, but it’s decent.

(If you really are interested, please respond to my email, but be aware it may take me a day or three; I don’t check it often anymore.)

Cheers,

JG

(global-set-key (kbd “C-c i d”) ‘my-insert-date)

Works for me.

JG

I tried implementing the strategy above, because I want the capability just like you
explained. However, I expect to use dired only, and not to ftp a currently visiting buffer. I
think this is where we differ in expected usage. Anyway, here’s how I tried it:

First we want to define a file that stores the target url. This will be relative to each
directory.

(defvar *dired-cpauto-setting-file* “.dired-cpauto”
“The relative path file to check in the local directory for the
target copy path.”)

The file will look like this (UNIX or DOS line endings OK):
echo “/ftp:username@remotehost:/path/to/my/dir/” > .dired-cpauto
echo “—- comments —-” >> .dired-cpauto

Then we need a function that will parse the setting in the file.

(defun dired-cpauto-parse-setting (&optional arg)
“Get the target url setting in ange-ftp format from file
`*dired-cpauto-setting-file*’. If the file does not exist, nil is returned.

For parsing simplicity, the file’s first non-blank line is returned, and
the rest are ignored.

ARG is currently ignored”
(interactive)
(let* ((file (expand-file-name *dired-cpauto-setting-file*
(dired-current-directory)))
(attr (file-attributes file))
target-path)
(if (and attr) ; file exists
(save-match-data
(with-current-buffer (generate-new-buffer “*dired-cpauto*”)
(insert-file-contents file)
(goto-char (point-min))
(skip-chars-forward ” \t\r\n”)
;; get the first line
(let* ((start (point))
(end (save-excursion
(skip-chars-forward “^\r\n”)
(point))))
(setq target-path (buffer-substring start end)))
(if (string-match “\\(.*?\\)\\(?:\\s-\\|[\n]\\)+\\’” target-path)
(setq target-path (match-string 1 target-path)))
(kill-buffer (current-buffer)))
))
target-path))

Then, assuming we are in a dired buffer and we are file copying like normal, we just need to
reuse the dired copy command:

(defun dired-do-cpauto (&optional arg)
“Modeled after `dired-do-copy’”
(interactive “P”)
(if (dired-cpauto-parse-setting)
(flet ( ;; this is where to put it
(dired-dwim-target-directory (&rest args)
(dired-cpauto-parse-setting))
;; stop asking me interactively where to put it
(dired-mark-read-file-name (prompt target-dir &rest args)
target-dir)
;; stop asking me interactively if I want to overwrite
(dired-query (&rest args) t))
(call-interactively ‘dired-do-copy))
(message “dired-do-cpauto: setting file %s does not exist, please create it with the
target directory in ange-ftp format”
*dired-cpauto-setting-file*)))

I use flet to redefine dired internal functions temporarily in order to get the functionality
I want.

I’ve tried this code and it works to my satisfaction. E.g. I select the file or files using
dired commands dired-mark (”m”), then activate the command dired-do-cpauto to upload it
automatically. It may have some rough edges on non-valid input, so YMMV.

This functionality should be more general because dired, ange-ftp and/or TRAMP packages are
doing the heavy lifting for us. In other words, not only is ftp supported, but any other
remote transport that ange-ftp/TRAMP supports, like sftp, ssh, rsync, etc.

I also wanted a useful reminder, because I can’t remember commands to type in M-x. So I added
a menu item to the Dired special “Operate” menu.

(let ((menu-bar (lookup-key dired-mode-map [menu-bar])))
(let ((menu (lookup-key menu-bar [operate])))
(define-key-after
menu
[copy-auto]
‘(menu-item
“Copy automatically”
dired-do-cpauto
:help “Copy marked files to specified remote automatically”)
‘copy)))

Lastly, there is a problem with this on Windows if the source directory path has spaces in
it. The problem is that the path is copied verbatim to the ftp tool. This is a problem in the
underlying ange-ftp or tramp. :-(

Thanks for this topic. I use Filezilla all the time, but now that I have this, bye bye
Filezilla!

ftp-wrappers is really all about saving me time and keystrokes. I enumerated my reasons behind it in the post.

• As I generally put a file for a certain local location in a certain remote location I don’t want to have to fire up dired after I’ve created a webpage in order to upload it. M-x dired on its own is 6 keystrokes too many.
• Likewise when I’ve written a webpage, emacs is open already and using curl is too many keystrokes. It might be worth wrapping though!
• The ftp-server on my webserver has a short timeout so I like to manage that myself and reduce the number of times it has to connect when I’m uploading multiple files.

Thanks for the tip on .netrc. I’ll move the password info out of the elisp code. I (mostly) trust the other user who uses my computer so putting passwords in files is not really an issue.

JG