editing files on an FTP server

[yesthattom]

I need a better way to edit files on my web sites that are hosted at services that only support ftp. I am on a Mac. The download-edit-upload cycle sucks. Yes, I've automated it and it still sucks. I even use CyberFrogFTP and that does the download-edit but I have to save then click upload then check to see if the files it selected are right blah blah blah. Mac's FTPFS is read-only. Any tips? This is SO FING FRUSTRATING!

Comments

fuse

[chrisla.livejournal.com]

I think there are FUSE filesystems for FTP. I would imagine that would allow you to connect to your FTP site as a filesytem and edit them like they were local.

Re: fuse

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Do you know that it supports read/write operations or are you just guessing?

Re: fuse

[chrisla.livejournal.com]

I checked, fuseftp does.

http://wiki.thiesen.org/page/Fuseftp

Re: fuse

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Awesome! Thanks!

Tom

[obra.livejournal.com]

Why aren't you editing locally version controlled files with a "publish" step (which might just be a makefile wrapper around a bulk ftp upload?

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Because I'm in hell.

This is for my one site where instead of keeping things in SubVersion and pushing out to the web site, I have to edit things there (and make regular backups... which get checked into SubVersion).

WinSCP

[jorhett.livejournal.com]

WinSCP with keep-up-to-date mode. Or just run "synchronize" every once in a while, either way. It supports FTP now too.

And jesus, Tom, what are you still doing FTP for? I actually disabled FTP on my colo box (which has about 100 friends domains on it) 2 years ago, and so far nobody has a problem with that. Do you still use telnet too? *giggle*

I can't read.

[jorhett.livejournal.com]

Sorry, of course you use a mac. Duh ;-)

Use Cyberduck. You can edit files directly, no download/upload nonsense.
(er, rather, it does it for you and appears seamless)

Re: I can't read.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I tried CyberDuck and that function didn't work for me. Maybe I was trying to get it to work with vi or something.

However, I just downloaded the newest version AND TextWrangler and they seem to work! Thanks!

Re: I can't read.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

I know that BBEdit, TextWrangler's bigger brother will do direct FTP open and saves without the need for an FTP program passthrough. It's possible that TextWrangler will do so as well.

If not, get BBEdit anyways. It's a very very nice text editor for the Mac. You can even initiate it from the command line.

a clue.

[jorhett.livejournal.com]

Sorry, dead brain. Go http://cyberduck.ch/help/en/howto/editing.html

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Uh, what editor do you use? Both vim and emacs have extensions of some kind that allow you to edit a URI, which it then goes off and fetches, and when you save, it pushes the new copy back to the remote location.

That's what I'd do, if I were you, anyway. Use vim and ":e ftp://host/path/to/file" ...

[penk.livejournal.com]

As someone who has hand-coded websites for ages and ages, my advice is?

Stop :)

Content management systems have so far surpassed the local-edit-then-upload process, it makes almost no sense to do local design and work anymore.

We use Drupal and Movable Type like crazy. Any static pages I have I just edit online now using vim, but they are limited to scripts and short simple stuff.

[mbarr.livejournal.com]

well.. i was going to just tell you textwrangeler does it for free, with support for FTP & SFTP.. but the rest of the class told you that.

Even so... you can't just keep a copy on your local machine, and view it through local apache, and then upload when you're happy? (I've done both- sometimes it's just not worth keeping the local copy :)

[mbarr.livejournal.com]

Oh-- and what I was really going to say: Check out MacFusion. (it's fuse for mac, with a nice gui, and adds r/w FTP & SFTP.