HTTP Considerations

A connection to an HTTP or HTTPS server may involve the following considerations not relevant to FTP, FTPS, and SFTP connections.

Cookies

Robo-FTP supports cookies in HTTP/HTTPS connections on a per-session basis. Each session's cookie store is destroyed when the session ends. In this context, the term "session" means the period between the FTPLOGON and FTPLOGOFF.

URL Encoding

When connected to HTTP/HTTPS sites you may encounter situations where the name of a resource on the remote site contains characters that are reserved, unsafe, or otherwise unprintable. In these situations web servers allow you to "percent encode" the required character by replacing it with a percent sign and the two digit hexadecimal representation of the character's position in the ASCII character set.

The following chart lists characters that are frequently URL encoded:

Directory Listings

The success of several script command depends on Robo-FTP's ability to automatically read and understand the directory listings returned by the remote site. Most HTTP/HTTPS sites do not return listings in a supported format and many return no raw directory listings in response to HTTP GET requests based on slash-terminated URLs. Some respond to HEAD requests and are partially compatible. Some supported HTTP listing types like APACHE_DEFAULT include file sizes rounded to the nearest megabyte or kilobyte and are therefore not fully compatible. Contact technical support if you have an urgent need related to a raw directory listing format that is currently unsupported.

Miscellaneous Differences

Many of the Robo-FTP script commands for manipulating files on a remote site will only work with DAV enabled web servers. With other Robo-FTP commands, the wildcard pattern matching behavior is modified or unavailable on HTTP and HTTPS connections. Details regarding these differences are included on the Help file pages for the applicable script commands.