Python script to get files from one server into another and store them in separate directories?

Question

I am working on server 1. I need to write a Python script where I need to connect to a server 2 and get certain files (files whose name begins with the letters 'HM') from a directory and put them into another directory, which needs to be created at the run time (because for each run of the program, a new directory has to be created and the files must be dumped in there), on server 1.

I need to do this in Python and I'm relatively new to this language. I have no idea where to start with the code. Is there a solution that doesn't involve 'tarring' the files? I have looked through Paramiko but that just transfers one file at a time to my knowledge. I have even looked at glob but I cannot figure out how to use it.

Answer 1

to transfer the files you might wanna check out paramiko

import os
import paramiko

localpath = '~/pathNameForToday/'
os.system('mkdir ' + localpath)
ssh = paramiko.SSHClient() 
ssh.load_host_keys(os.path.expanduser(os.path.join("~", ".ssh", "known_hosts")))
ssh.connect(server, username=username, password=password)
sftp = ssh.open_sftp()
sftp.get(remotepath, localpath)
sftp.close()
ssh.close() 

I you wanna use glob you can do this:

import os
import re
import glob

filesiwant = re.compile('^HM.+') #if your files follow a more specific pattern and you don't know regular expressions you can give me a sample name and i'll give you the regex4it
path = '/server2/filedir/'
for infile in glob.glob( os.path.join(path, '*') ):
    if filesiwant.match(infile):
         print "current file is: " + infile

otherwise an easier alternative is to use os.listdir()

import os
for infile in os.listdir('/server2/filedir/'):
    ...`

does that answer your question? if not leave comments