Python FTP server library provides a high-level portable interface to easily write very efficient, scalable and asynchronous FTP servers with Python. It is the most complete RFC-959 FTP server implementation available for Python programming language.
- Extremely lightweight, fast and scalable (see why and benchmarks).
- Uses sendfile(2) (see pysendfile) system call for uploads (Linux only).
- Uses
epoll()/kqueue()/select()to handle concurrency asynchronously. - ...But can optionally skip to a multiple thread / process model (as in: you'll be free to block or use slow filesystems).
- Portable: entirely written in pure Python.
- Supports FTPS (RFC-4217), IPv6 (RFC-2428), Unicode file names (RFC-2640), MLSD/MLST commands (RFC-3659).
- Support for virtual users and virtual filesystem.
- Flexible system of "authorizers" able to manage both "virtual" and "real" users on on both UNIX and Windows.
Despite being written in an interpreted language, pyftpdlib has transfer rates comparable or superior to common UNIX FTP servers written in C. It usually tends to scale better (see benchmarks) because whereas vsftpd and proftpd use multiple processes to achieve concurrency, pyftpdlib only uses one (see the C10K problem).
| benchmark type | pyftpdlib | proftpd | speedup |
| STOR (client -> server) | 585.90 MB/sec | 600.49 MB/sec | -0.02x |
| RETR (server -> client) | 1652.72 MB/sec | 1524.05 MB/sec | +0.08 |
| 300 concurrent clients (connect, login) | 0.19 secs | 9.98 secs | +51x |
| STOR (1 file with 300 idle clients) | 585.59 MB/sec | 518.55 MB/sec | +0.1x |
| RETR (1 file with 300 idle clients) | 1497.58 MB/sec | 1478.19 MB/sec | 0x |
| 300 concurrent clients (RETR 10M file) | 3.41 secs | 3.60 secs | +0.05x |
| 300 concurrent clients (STOR 10M file) | 8.60 secs | 11.56 secs | +0.3x |
| 300 concurrent clients (QUIT) | 0.03 secs | 0.39 secs | +12x |
| benchmark type | pyftpdlib | vsftpd | speedup |
| STOR (client -> server) | 585.90 MB/sec | 611.73 MB/sec | -0.04x |
| RETR (server -> client) | 1652.72 MB/sec | 1512.92 MB/sec | +0.09 |
| 300 concurrent clients (connect, login) | 0.19 secs | 20.39 secs | +106x |
| STOR (1 file with 300 idle clients) | 585.59 MB/sec | 610.23 MB/sec | -0.04x |
| RETR (1 file with 300 idle clients) | 1497.58 MB/sec | 1493.01 MB/sec | 0x |
| 300 concurrent clients (RETR 10M file) | 3.41 secs | 3.67 secs | +0.07x |
| 300 concurrent clients (STOR 10M file) | 8.60 secs | 9.82 secs | +0.07x |
| 300 concurrent clients (QUIT) | 0.03 secs | 0.01 secs | +0.14x |
For more benchmarks see here.
Start a FTP server, with an anonymous user with write permissions, on port 2121:
$ python3 -m pyftpdlib --write
RuntimeWarning: write permissions assigned to anonymous user.
self._check_permissions(username, perm)
[I 2024-06-23 13:49:35] concurrency model: async
[I 2024-06-23 13:49:35] masquerade (NAT) address: None
[I 2024-06-23 13:49:35] passive ports: None
[I 2024-06-23 13:49:35] >>> starting FTP server on 0.0.0.0:2121, pid=763634 <<<>>> from pyftpdlib.authorizers import DummyAuthorizer
>>> from pyftpdlib.handlers import FTPHandler
>>> from pyftpdlib.servers import FTPServer
>>>
>>> authorizer = DummyAuthorizer()
>>> authorizer.add_user("user", "12345", "/home/giampaolo", perm="elradfmwMT")
>>> authorizer.add_anonymous("/home/nobody")
>>>
>>> handler = FTPHandler
>>> handler.authorizer = authorizer
>>>
>>> server = FTPServer(("127.0.0.1", 21), handler)
>>> server.serve_forever()
[I 13-02-19 10:55:42] >>> starting FTP server on 127.0.0.1:21 <<<
[I 13-02-19 10:55:42] poller: <class 'pyftpdlib.ioloop.Epoll'>
[I 13-02-19 10:55:42] masquerade (NAT) address: None
[I 13-02-19 10:55:42] passive ports: None
[I 13-02-19 10:55:42] use sendfile(2): True
[I 13-02-19 10:55:45] 127.0.0.1:34178-[] FTP session opened (connect)
[I 13-02-19 10:55:48] 127.0.0.1:34178-[user] USER 'user' logged in.
[I 13-02-19 10:56:27] 127.0.0.1:34179-[user] RETR /home/giampaolo/.vimrc completed=1 bytes=1700 seconds=0.001
[I 13-02-19 10:56:39] 127.0.0.1:34179-[user] FTP session closed (disconnect).For other code samples read the tutorial
A lot of time and effort went into making pyftpdlib as it is right now. If you feel pyftpdlib is useful to you or your business and want to support its future development please consider donating me some money.