# Import files from SFTP servers

🤖/sftp/import imports whole libraries of files from your SFTP servers into Transloadit. This Robot relies on public key authentication.

![](/_next/static/media/sftp-import.03ptbii4eccie.png?dpl=dpl_BKGqLNQjWctpVS239h7ZAKL6edZN)

###### Keep your credentials safe

Since you need to provide credentials to this Robot, always use this together with Templates and/or Template Credentials, so that you can never leak any secrets while transmitting your Assembly Instructions.

###### Note

Transloadit supports file sizes up to 200 GB. If you require a higher limit for your application, [get in touch](mailto:hello@transloadit.com?subject=Large%20filesizes).

## Usage example

Import files from the `path/to/files` directory and its subdirectories:

```
{
  "steps": {
    "imported": {
      "robot": "/sftp/import",
      "credentials": "YOUR_SFTP_CREDENTIALS",
      "path": "path/to/files/"
    }
  }
}
```

## Parameters

* ### `interpolate`

`boolean | Record<string, boolean>`\
Controls whether Assembly Variables are interpolated for individual instruction fields.\
By default, most Robot instruction fields interpolate Assembly Variables. Set this to `false` to treat every instruction field as literal text, or set an individual field path to `false` to treat only that field as literal text. For Robot-specific fields that are literal by default, set this to `true` or set that field path to `true` to opt back into interpolation.\
Use field names such as `path`, or dotted paths such as `ffmpeg.vf` for nested objects.

* ### `output_meta`

`Record<string, boolean> | boolean | Array<string>`\
Allows you to specify a set of metadata that is more expensive on CPU power to calculate, and thus is disabled by default to keep your Assemblies processing fast.\
For images, you can add `"has_transparency": true` in this object to extract if the image contains transparent parts and `"dominant_colors": true` to extract an array of hexadecimal color codes from the image.\
For images, you can also add `"blurhash": true` to extract a [BlurHash](https://blurha.sh) string — a compact representation of a placeholder for the image, useful for showing a blurred preview while the full image loads.\
For videos, you can add the `"colorspace: true"` parameter to extract the colorspace of the output video.\
For audio, you can add `"mean_volume": true` to get a single value representing the mean average volume of the audio file.\
You can also set this to `false` to skip metadata extraction and speed up transcoding.

* ### `result`

`boolean` (default: `false`)\
Whether the results of this Step should be present in the Assembly Status JSON

* ### `queue`

`batch`\
Setting the queue to 'batch', manually downgrades the priority of jobs for this step to avoid consuming Priority job slots for jobs that don't need zero queue waiting times

* ### `force_accept`

`boolean` (default: `false`)\
Force a Robot to accept a file type it would have ignored.\
By default, Robots ignore files they are not familiar with.[🤖/video/encode](/docs/robots/video-encode.md), for example, will happily ignore input images.\
With the `force_accept` parameter set to `true`, you can force Robots to accept all files thrown at them. This will typically lead to errors and should only be used for debugging or combatting edge cases.

* ### `force_name`

`string | Array<string> | null` (default: `null`)\
Custom name for the imported file(s). By default file names are derived from the source.

* ### `credentials`

`string`\
Please create your associated Template Credentials in your Transloadit account and use the name of your Template Credentials as this parameter's value. They will contain the values for your SFTP host, user and optional custom public key.\
While we recommend to use Template Credentials at all times, some use cases demand dynamic credentials for which using Template Credentials is too unwieldy because of their static nature. If you have this requirement, feel free to use the following parameters instead: `"host"`, `"port"`, `"user"`, `"public_key"` (optional).

* ### `port`

`string | number` (default: `21`)\
The port to use for the FTP connection.

* ### `path` — **required**

`string`\
The path on your SFTP server where to search for files.

## Demos

* [Service to import entire folders from an SFTP server](/demos/file-importing/import-an-entire-folder-over-sftp/)

## Related blog posts

* [Introducing new /sftp/import Robot for easy file imports](/blog/2012/10/new-robot-sftp-import/) October 30, 2012
* [Introducing new /ftp/import Robot for file imports](/blog/2014/03/a-new-addition-to-the-family-the-ftp-import-robot/) March 6, 2014
* [New pricing model for future Transloadit customers](/blog/2018/02/raising-prices/) February 7, 2018