Processing Remote Files via FTP

The only information that you have to provide the Text Workbench with to process files on a remote FTP server, is the following:

the remote server name;
the user name and the password with which you want to access the remote server;
the name of the folder in which you want to search for files.

The aggregate of the above entities forms an url(uniform resource locator) - in our case, this is an FTP URL. We use FTP URL's to tell the Text Workbench where to search and process remote files.

The Text Workbench accepts the common canonical format of URL's, which looks as follows:

ftp://username:password@server[/folder/folder/....]

In this URL:

ftp:// is the protocol name (FTP);
username:password are the user's user name and password separated with semicolon. If you access your FTP server anonymously, ignore the whole section username:password@;
server is the remote server name, either a domain name (e.g. server.com) or an IP address (e.g. 127.0.0.1);
folder parts form the path to the search directory on the server. If you omit the path, the root directory of the server will be searched.

The FTP URL's are entered in the Folders field of the Text and Files tab, just like names of local folders:

Specify other search criteria. You will find many examples of different tasks in the Common Tasks and Knowledge Base sections of this help system.

In fact, this is all that you need to do to start processing files on a remote FTP server. After you click Search or Replace, the Text Workbench starts processing remote files according to the specified rules and options.

Upon completion, you can click any found file to view it. The file will be downloaded from the server, thus ensuring the data is up-to-date. You can click Edit to load the file in the text editor. If you modify the file and click Save in the editor, the file is uploaded back to the server.