ftputil: listdir returns an empty list even though the directory is not empty

Question

I want to use ftputil instead of ftplib in python.
On a public ftp server everything works fine with both libraries:

host = 'ftp.avm.de'
user = 'anonymous'
passwd = ''


import ftputil
with ftputil.FTPHost(host, user, passwd) as ftp:
    print(ftp.getcwd(), ftp.listdir('.'))


import ftplib
with ftplib.FTP(host, user, passwd) as ftp:
    print(ftp.pwd(), ftp.nlst('.'))

output:

/ ['archive', 'fritzbox', 'fritzpowerline', 'fritzwlan']
/ ['archive', 'fritzbox', 'fritzpowerline', 'fritzwlan']

If I do it on a ftp server (Windows CE6) in my local network, the output of ftputil is empty while ftplib correctly lists all files:

/ []
/ ['1', '2', '3']

What am i missing?

Answer 1

The observation above could be because of https://ftputil.sschwarzer.net/trac/ticket/110. Directories and files will be missing from the FTPHost.listdir result if the FTP server doesn't understand the -a option for listing hidden directories and files and interprets the option as a directory or file to list.

Try setting use_list_a_option to False after creating the FTPHost instance:

ftp_host = ftputil.FTPHost(host, user, password)
ftp_host.use_list_a_option = False
# Use ftp_host as before.
...

In a future ftputil version 4.x, use_list_a_option will default to False to avoid this problem (see the linked ticket). I didn't want to make this change earlier in a bugfix release because this is a backward-incompatible change and may break currently working code.