How do I recursively ftp only certain file types from a linux server using the command line?

Question

I want to download only .htm or .html files from my server. I'm trying to use ncftpget and even wget but only with limited success.

with ncftpget I can download the whole tree structure no problem but can't seem to specify which files I want, it's either all or nothing.

If I specify the file type like this, it only looks in the top folder:

ncftpget -R -u myuser -p mypass ftp://ftp.myserver.com/public_html/*.htm ./local_folder

If I do this, it downloads the whole site and not just .htm files:

ncftpget -R -u myuser -p mypass ftp://ftp.myserver.com/public_html/ ./local_folder *.htm

Can I use ncftp to do this, or is there another tool I should be using?

Answer 1

You can do it with wget

wget -r -np -A "*.htm*" ftp://site/dir

or:

wget -m -np -A "*.htm*" ftp://user:pass@host/dir

However, as per Types of Files:

Note that these two options do not affect the downloading of HTML files (as determined by a .htm or .html filename prefix). This behavior may not be desirable for all users, and may be changed for future versions of Wget.