graval

An experimental FTP server framework. By providing a simple driver class that responds to a handful of methods you can have a complete FTP server.

Some sample use cases include persisting data to:

• an Amazon S3 bucket
• a relational database
• redis
• memory

There is a sample in-memory driver available - see the usage instructions below for the steps to use it.

Full documentation for the package is available on godoc

Installation

go get github.com/yob/graval

Usage

To boot an FTP server you will need to provide a driver that speaks to your persistence layer - the required driver contract is listed below.

There is a sample in-memory driver available as a demo. You can build it with this command:

go install github.com/yob/graval/graval-mem

Then run it:

./bin/graval-mem

And finally, connect to the server with any FTP client and the following details:

host: 127.0.0.1
username: test
password: 1234

The Driver Contract

Your driver MUST implement a number of simple methods. You can view the required contract in the package docs on godoc

Contributors

• James Healy james@yob.id.au http://www.yob.id.au

Warning

FTP is an incredibly insecure protocol. Be careful about forcing users to authenticate with a username or password that are important.

License

This library is distributed under the terms of the MIT License. See the included file for more detail.

Contributing

All suggestions and patches welcome, preferably via a git repository I can pull from. If this library proves useful to you, please let me know.

Further Reading

There are a range of RFCs that together specify the FTP protocol. In chronological order, the more useful ones are:

• http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc959.txt
• http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1123.txt
• http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2228.txt
• http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2389.txt
• http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2428.txt
• http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3659.txt
• http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4217.txt

For an english summary that's somewhat more legible than the RFCs, and provides some commentary on what features are actually useful or relevant 24 years after RFC959 was published:

• http://cr.yp.to/ftp.html

For a history lesson, check out Appendix III of RCF959. It lists the preceding (obsolete) RFC documents that relate to file transfers, including the ye old RFC114 from 1971, "A File Transfer Protocol"

This library is heavily based on em-ftpd, an FTPd framework with similar design goals within the ruby and EventMachine ecosystems. It worked well enough, but you know, callbacks and event loops make me something something.