Using PowerShell to download all files in a directory - powershell

Question

I have a working PowerShell script that iterates through a directory accessed via FTP and prints it's contents. The script looks like this:
$sourceuri = "<string>"
$targetpath = "<string>"
$username = "<string>"
$password = "<string>"
# Create a FTPWebRequest object to handle the connection to the ftp server
$ftprequest = [System.Net.FtpWebRequest]::create($sourceuri)
# set the request's network credentials for an authenticated connection
$ftprequest.Credentials = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential($username,$password)
$ftprequest.Method = [System.Net.WebRequestMethods+Ftp]::ListDirectoryDetails
$ftprequest.UseBinary = $true
$ftprequest.KeepAlive = $false
# send the ftp request to the server
$ftpresponse = $ftprequest.GetResponse()
$stream = $ftpresponse.getresponsestream()
$buffer = new-object System.Byte[] 1024
$encoding = new-object System.Text.AsciiEncoding
$outputBuffer = ""
$foundMore = $false
## Read all the data available from the stream, writing it to the
## output buffer when done.
do
{
## Allow data to buffer for a bit
start-sleep -m 1000
## Read what data is available
$foundmore = $false
$stream.ReadTimeout = 1000
do
{
try
{
$read = $stream.Read($buffer, 0, 1024)
if($read -gt 0)
{
$foundmore = $true
$outputBuffer += ($encoding.GetString($buffer, 0, $read))
}
}
catch
{
$foundMore = $false; $read = 0
}
}
while($read -gt 0)
}
while($foundmore)
$outputBuffer
My actual goal is not to just list the files but download them to the machine running the script. I'm finding this a bit tricky since my loops only reference bytes and not files by name. How can I use this loop to download all the files in a directory instead of just listing them?

Answer 1

I prefer use real FTP libraries like the one of winscp but there are other examples out there. http://winscp.net/eng/docs/library_session_listdirectory#example

Answer 2

once you have a the list of directories and files - use the get-content method to read from the list, and then use the bits transfer to download all files - I'm not sure if this will download the directories as well... but it will definitely download the files...