CURLOPT_FTP_FILEMETHOD - select directory traversing method for FTP

Added in curl 7.15.1

CURLFTPMETHOD_MULTICWD

Pass a long telling libcurl which method to use to reach a file on a FTP(S) server. This option exists because some server implementations are not compliant to what the standards say should work. The argument should be one of the following alternatives: CURLFTPMETHOD_MULTICWD libcurl does a single CWD operation for each path part in the given URL. For deep hierarchies this means many commands. This is how RFC 1738 says it should be done. This is the default but the slowest behavior. CURLFTPMETHOD_NOCWD libcurl makes no CWD at all. libcurl does SIZE, RETR, STOR etc and gives a full path to the server for all these commands. This is the fastest behavior since it skips having to change directories. CURLFTPMETHOD_SINGLECWD libcurl does one CWD with the full target directory and then operates on the file &"normally" (like in the multicwd case). This is somewhat more standards compliant than 'nocwd' but without the full penalty of 'multicwd'.

int main(void) { CURL *curl = curl_easy_init(); if(curl) { CURLcode res; curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "ftp://example.com/1/2/3/4/new.txt"); curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_FTP_FILEMETHOD, (long)CURLFTPMETHOD_SINGLECWD); res = curl_easy_perform(curl); curl_easy_cleanup(curl); } }

CURLOPT_FTP_FILEMETHOD - select directory traversing method for FTP

This functionality affects ftp only

curl_easy_setopt(3) returns a CURLcode indicating success or error. CURLE_OK (0) means everything was OK, non-zero means an error occurred, see libcurl-errors(3).

CURLOPT_DIRLISTONLY(3), CURLOPT_FTP_SKIP_PASV_IP(3) libcurl 2025-06-16 CURLOPT_FTP_FILEMETHOD(3)

#include <curl/curl.h> CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_FTP_FILEMETHOD, long method);