Secure Communication Module User’s Guide : PART IV FTPS Package : Chapter 9 Overview of the FTPS Package
Chapter 9 Overview of the FTPS Package
Introduction
The FTPS package is a group of C++ classes that implement FTP over SSL. The package depends on the Secure Sockets package of Rogue Wave SourcePro Net. Basically, the FTPS protocol —also commonly called FTP Secure —is the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) protocol combined with Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) You can do anything with an FTPS connection that you can do with a normal FTP connection, but your information is transmitted through a secure and encrypted connection.
NOTE >> Note that FTPS is not related to the SFTP protocol which is SSH File Transfer Protocol or Simple File Transfer Protocol.
The FTPS package implements the “explicit” mode of the protocol, meaning that the client initially connects using FTP and then issues the AUTH TLS protocol command to switch to a secure connection. Unlike implicit mode —which automatically uses a secure connection —explicit mode allows for more control over FTP connections. For instance, if you don’t expect to be transferring sensitive data, you could encrypt only the command channel containing usernames and passwords for authentication, and not the data channel. This could save valuable system resources, since encryption activities use more bandwidth.
For information about the FTP, SSL/TLS, and FTPS protocols, see the Internet Engineering Task Force RFCs listed in Appendix B.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Classes in the FTPS Package
This package includes the following classes:
• RWFtpsClient
The client to connect to an FTP server.
• RWFtpsReply
The base class for all FTPS protocol reply messages.
 
• RWFtpsDataReply
A specialization class of RWFtpsReply that contains the data to be read from or written to the underlying socket.
• RWFtpsPwdReply
A specialization class of RWFtpsReply to parse the FTP protocol reply for the command PWD that returns current directory information.
Header Files
The rw\ftps directory contains a header file for each class. The header file names have the form classname.h. For example, the header file for RWFtpsClient is RWFtpsClient.h.
You can also use the umbrella header file ftps.h, which includes the header files for all classes in the FTPS package.