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The FTP ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from remote files and directories, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access remote data like you would a database through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

Using the CData ODBC Driver for FTP in PyCharm



Connect to FTP as an ODBC data source in PyCharm using the CData ODBC Driver for FTP.

The CData ODBC Drivers can be used in any environment that supports loading an ODBC Driver. In this tutorial we will explore using the CData ODBC Driver for FTP from within PyCharm. Included are steps for adding the CData ODBC Driver as a data source, as well as basic PyCharm code to query the data source and display results.

To begin, this tutorial will assume that you have already installed the CData ODBC Driver for FTP as well as PyCharm.

Add Pyodbc to the Project

Follow the steps below to add the pyodbc module to your project.

  1. Click File -> Settings to open the project settings window.
  2. Click Project Interpreter from the Project: YourProjectName menu.
  3. To add pyodbc, click the + button and enter pyodbc.
  4. Click Install Package to install pyodbc.

Connect to FTP

You can now connect with an ODBC connection string or a DSN. See the Getting Started section in the CData driver documentation for a guide to creating a DSN on your OS.

To connect to FTP or SFTP servers, specify at least RemoteHost and FileProtocol. Specify the port with RemotePort.

Set User and Password to perform Basic authentication. Set SSHAuthMode to use SSH authentication. See the Getting Started section of the data provider help documentation for more information on authenticating via SSH.

Set SSLMode and SSLServerCert to secure connections with SSL.

The data provider lists the tables based on the available folders in your FTP server. Set the following connection properties to control the relational view of the file system:

  • RemotePath: Set this to the current working directory.
  • TableDepth: Set this to control the depth of folders to list as views.
  • FileRetrievalDepth: Set this to retrieve and list files recursively from the root table.

Stored Procedures are available to download files, upload files, and send protocol commands. See the Data Model chapter of the FTP data provider documentation for more information.

Below is the syntax for a DSN:

[CData FTP Source] Driver = CData ODBC Driver for FTP Description = My Description RemoteHost = MyFTPServer

Execute SQL to FTP

Instantiate a Cursor and use the execute method of the Cursor class to execute any SQL statement.

import pyodbc cnxn = pyodbc.connect('DRIVER={CData ODBC Driver for FTP};RemoteHost = MyFTPServer;') cursor = cnxn.cursor() cursor.execute("SELECT Filesize, Filename FROM MyDirectory WHERE FilePath = '/documents/doc.txt'") rows = cursor.fetchall() for row in rows: print(row.Filesize, row.Filename)

After connecting to FTP in PyCharm using the CData ODBC Driver, you will be able to build Python apps with access to FTP data as if it were a standard database. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback regarding this tutorial, please contact us at support@cdata.com.