We have a client that would like to use our application to browse files that their customer can upload via FTP. The problem is that, they want to be able to control everything through our application and also be able to mount the FTP Folders as network drives on their workstations. Unfortunately, they insist on using a Windows server instead of a Linux server running Samba. This is where I am having problems.

The client would like to be able to click on a button in our application and have it automatically issue a username and password to one of their customers. If their FTP Server were on a Linux Server, this would not be an issue; however, I have not be able to find a way to do this on a Windows box. The only server I have found that supports administrative commands through the command line is proprietary and costly.

We have the idea of sending a file to the FTP server and having a Perl or PHP script that looks at this file and creates users. If anybody has any idea of how I could accomplish this on a Windows box, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
~ JimmyJam

    a month later

    dont see why making a php interface that looks at a file and adds a user would be hard. several win32 binary versions of ftpd apps that run on linux and the link out there. i find it odd no one is saying anything here. pure-ftpd, slimftpd you name it.

      Look into using FileZilla. It's free and it has a server and client setup. I think that might be the "best" or even "easiest" one to use.

      You can probably still use one of the free linux clients, you'd just need to install CYGWIN on your server and test it out. I personally like pureFTPd; however, proFTPd has been shown to compile under Cygwin.

      And as a last resort, if nothing else, you can use a database to do authentication and store where their "root" is and use PHPs FTP functionality to create your own FTP program to do what you want. Then you don't have to worry about users in the system or anything like that 😉

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