Programming Tutorials

Use WinSCP to transfer log files remotely using Javascript

By: Eskalin in Javascript Tutorials on 2012-10-24  

Normally winscp program is used to connect to a remote machine and transfer files. Recently I wanted to connect to my linux machine from a windows machine to download a file automatically everyday. The linux machine was generating daily log files and the name of the log file keeps changing as the current date. So i wrote this script to connect to that machine remotely and download the file every day by running the script in a scheduler.

Save the below as test.js

Change the path to the winscp.com file based on where you installed your winscp program,

Then run the file as

cscript /nologo test.js

//Scripts starts from here.

// Local path to download to (keep trailing slash) 
    var LOCALPATH = "d:\\NASShare\\C5\\billlog\\"; 

    // Remote path to download from (keep trailing slash) 
    var REMOTEPATH = "/var/log/sipproxyd/billing/"; 

    // Session to connect to 
    var SESSION = "root:[email protected]"; 

    // Path to winscp.com 
    var WINSCP = "c:\\program files\\winscp\\winscp.com"; 

    // helper function to pad zeroes to the left of number 
    function pad(n, len) 
    { 
        var s = n.toString(); 
        while (s.length < len) 
        { 
            s = '0' + s; 
        } 
        return s; 
    } 

    var date = new Date(); 
    // format timestamp 
    var stamp = 
        pad(date.getFullYear(), 4) + '-' + 
        pad(date.getMonth(), 2) +  '-' + 
        pad(date.getDate(), 2); 
  
    // File to download 
    var FILE = "billing.log." + stamp; 
    var shell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell"); 

    //WScript.echo(FILE); 
    run winscp to download the file into timestamped-filename 
    exec = shell.Exec("\"" + WINSCP + "\""); 
    exec.StdIn.Write( 
        "option batch abort\n" + 
        "open \"" + SESSION + "\"\n" + 
        "get \"" + REMOTEPATH + FILE + "\" \"" + LOCALPATH + "\"\n" + 
        "exit\n"); 

    // wait until the script finishes 
    while (exec.Status == 0) 
    { 
        WScript.Sleep(100); 
        WScript.Echo(exec.StdOut.ReadAll()); 
    }