Tracking of changes on FTP when using Adress Book reference

Help & Support
1

Hi!
I'm noticing a difference in behavior between using a literal FTP path and an address book reference like @Named_Connection.

Example Set-up:

  1. A tab is open on ftp://192.168.0.164:2221//Audio Books
  2. A command like CreateFolder is run to change the contents of that folder
    3a. If a literal path was used, we see the new folder in that tab without the need for refreshing
    3b. If an address book reference was used, we need to refresh the tab in order to see the new folder.
@set ref @Phone/Phone_WiFi//Audio Books//Test
@set lit ftp://192.168.0.164:2221//Audio Books//Test
@set ftppath {$ref}
//@set ftppath {$lit}
CreateFolder "{$ftppath}"

Also, when I'm already in //Audio Books//Test, I don't see the new file that I copied there via Copy TO="{$ftppath}" or Copy CREATEFOLDER "{$ftppath}" until I refresh, somehow, while it DOES work for just //Audio Books when I'm using a literal path.

(Behavior seems the same whether I've opened the tab via literal address or FTP menu)

  1. How come literal path and reference differ?
  2. How come I can see changes for //Audio Books but not //Audio Books//Test?
  3. Can we please have better tracking when using address book references and (deeper subfolders?)?

Thank you :blush:

2

The FTP protocol has no change notification system, so what a folder tab showing an FTP site will react to is quite limited.

Your best bet is to use commands with just a folder name and not the full path, and run them from a tab that's already looking at the parent directory. If you need them to work even when the current tab is not pointing at the FTP site or parent folder then scripting can be used to find the tab that is pointing at the site/folder and run the command from that tab (or fall back on the method you're currently using if no such tab exists, which would also mean you don't need to care about change notification).

Really, though, you're expecting too much from FTP by doing things like this. :slight_smile: It's a very simple protocol. Use it to transfer things but don't expect it to behave like a fully featured filesystem or you'll quickly run into its limitations.

1 Like
3

Oh, I know it's not an FTP feature; I wouldn't have said anything if I hadn't noticed the difference, making me think DOpus is manually updating the file list in some cases, but not in others.
Or are the "sometimes updates" just a happy accident/emergent behavior?