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The /ftp/import Robot

We are happy to import from whatever storage solution suits you best.

The /ftp/import Robot imports whole libraries of files from your FTP servers into Transloadit. No public key authentication is required. This Robot relies on password access.

Parameters

Name Type Default Description
use (required) String / Array of Strings

General

Specifies which Step(s) to use as the input to this Robot.

Special Step names

A special Step name is ":original", which provides user uploads handled by Transloadit.

Providing several Steps as input

You can add arrays to use several Steps: 
"use": [
  ":original",
  "encoded",
  "resized"
]

Step bundling

Some Robots can gather several Step results for a single invocation. For example, the /file/compress Robot would normally create one Zip file for each file passed to it. If you'd set bundle_steps to true, however, it will create one archive containing all the result files from all Steps you give it. To enable bundling, provide an object like the one below to the use parameter: 
  "use": {
    "steps": [
      ":original",
      "encoded",
      "resized"
    ],
    "bundle_steps": true
  }
This is a crucial parameter for the /video/adaptive Robot, otherwise you'll generate 1 playlist for each viewing quality.
Keep in mind that all input Steps must be present in your Template. If one of them is missing, no result is generated because the Robot waits indefinitely for all input Steps to be finished.

Group by original

Sticking with the /file/compress Robot example, you can set group_by_original to true, in order to create a separate Zip file for each of your uploaded or imported files, instead of creating one archive containing all originals (or one per resulting file). This is a crucial parameter for the /media/playlist Robot.

Demo

See a demo for the use parameter here.
credentials (required) 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 FTP host, user and password. While we recommend to use Template Credentials at all times, some use cases demand dynamic credentials for which using Template Credentials with their static nature is too unwieldy. If you have this requirement, feel free to use the following parameters instead: "host", "user", "password".
path (required) String The path on your FTP server where to search for files. Files are imported recursively from all sub-directories and sub-sub-directories (and so on) from this path.
port Integer 21 The port to use for the FTP connection.
ignore_errors Array [] Possible array members are "meta" and "import". There might be an error coming up when trying to extract meta data from your imported files. This happens for files that are zero bytes big for example. Including "meta" in the array will cause the Robot to not stop the import (and the entire Assembly) when that happens. Including "import" in the array will ensure Robot does not error out on any import errors either. To keep backwards compatibility, setting this parameter to true will set it to ["meta", "import"] internally.
passive_mode Boolean true Determines if passive mode should be used for the FTP connection.
See full docs

Demos

Our /ftp/import Robot can be used in combination with other Robots, to create powerful workflows unique to your use case. Here are a few example scenarios that you can try live on our website:

Blog posts about the /ftp/import Robot

We wrote the following posts about the /ftp/import Robot on our blog:

Did you know?

You can easily combine Robots to create powerful workflows, unique to your business.
This is the power of Transloadit.