dayamn.com

Some time ago I had to develop a web FTP solution for a client and as a client’s choice, I had to use ASP.NET 3.5 to do it. I never liked Visual Basic.NET that much so I always use C# when I need to develop .NET applications.

I thought of using the FTPWebRequest class to develop the solution and everything was going fine until I had to use the solution to create a connection to an FTP location that was secured using implicit SSL.

I googled and googled about it and finally I found out that our friends at Microsoft decided NOT to support implicit SSL for the FTPWebRequest class. This is another reason that makes me want to meet the guy who designed this class and slap him in the face. This and the fact that the FTPWebRequest class is based on the HTTPWebRequest class without taking in account that FTP and HTTP are protocols that work in a completely different way, hence, the FTPWebRequest class lacks of a lot of features that could make it a powerful FTP tool.

Having said that, using FTPWebRequest makes it easy to create FTP solutions once you make sure you WON’T need to connect to FTP locations that are secured by implicit SSL. If you are one of the unfortunate souls that need to support this type of security, I’m sorry to say it but you will need to use – as primitive as it sounds – sockets so don’t even bother using FTPWebRequest since you would be doing the work twice.

FTPWebRequest does support explicit SSL so if you  can persuade your client to use explicit SSL in his FTP locations, go for FTPWebRequest since it’s very easy to use.

Cheers!