I am writing a simple Delphi7/FPC compatible console application in order to use in a daily task to transfer a backup zipfile from a server to my Windows 7 laptop. The task is a bat script that does a lot of other stuff as well as the FTP and it has been a struggle setting ftp up for batch file operation so I decided to write this console app to better integrate into the bat file.

To this end I have the following code (only showing the relevant stuff:

uses
SysUtils,
Classes,
IdFTP,
IdComponent,

  IniFiles;

var
  FTP: TIdFTP;
  FTPHost,
  FTPUser,
  FTPPwd: string;
  FTPPort: word;
  FList: TStringList;
...
function ConnectFTP: boolean;
begin
  Result := false;
  try
    if FTP.Connected then
    begin
      LogMessage('Already connected to ' + FTPHost);
      Result := true;
      exit;
    end;
    FTP.Host := FTPHost;  //remote server by computer name
    FTP.Port := FTPPort;  //remote port is 2121
    FTP.Username := FTPUser;  //Windows username
    FTP.Password := FTPPwd;   //Windows password
    FTP.Connect;
    if not FTP.Connected then
    begin
      LogError('Could not connect by FTP');
    end
    else
      LogMessage('Connected to ' + FTPHost);
    Result := FTP.Connected;
  except
    on E: Exception do
      LogException(E.Message);
  end;
end;
procedure ListFiles(var Lst: TStringList);
{Get a directory listing of remote ftp server's current dir}
var
  Res: string;
begin
  if not FTP.Connected then
    ConnectFTP;
  if not FTP.Connected then
    exit;
  try
    FTP.List(Res); // <== EXCEPTION HERE!
    Lst.Text := Res;
    LogMessage(Lst.Text);
  except
    on E: Exception do
      LogException(E.Message);
  end;
end;

....

begin
  FTP := TIdFTP.Create;
  FList := TStringList.Create;
  try
    GetConfig; //Retrieve configuration from ini file
    LogMessage('Starting FTP transfer from ' + FTPHost);
    if not ConnectFTP then
    begin
      LogError('Could not connect to ' + FTPHost + ' on port ' +
IntToStr(FTPPort));
      ExitCode := 1;
      Exit;
    end;
  //Now read directory on target
  ListFiles(FList);
.... more code here ....
  LogMessage('Finished transfer');
  finally
    FList.Free;
    if FTP.Connected then
      FTP.Disconnect;
    FTP.Free;
  end;
end.

What I get is an exception in my logfile saying:

20:14:01.018 EXCEPTION: Invalid PORT Command.

I have tried to trace it into the Indy sources but I get lost there and as soon as I release the execution I have the exception trigger.

The FTP server is on a Windows Server 2003 and it works OK using FileZilla and the Windows built-in FTP client as well as a FTP testing utility I have build years ago.

From this utility I have basically cut the code shown above and yet I

get the error when trying FTP.List()...

Normally when dealing with Indy errors I post on the Embarcadero Forum Delphi.Internet.Winsock using a newsreader. THen I usually get replies from Remy Lebeau.
But now it seems like the Embarcadero servers have crashed again so the forums are down.
Hence I am hoping for some help here...

Bo Berglund wrote

20:14:01.018 EXCEPTION: Invalid PORT Command.

Set FTP.Passive := True. PORT is used for active connections, where the server opens a connection to the client computer for the data stream. PASV is used for passive connections, where the client opens a second connection to the server.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1699145/what-is-the-difference-between-active-and-passive-ftp#1699163

Thanks!
That did the trick!
I was looking down the Windows Firewall settings to see if something there blocked the communications...

It turned out that the old code *had* an FTP.Passive := true;
statement hidden away where I did not notice..

And my code for retrieving the list was also incorrect, I needed FTP.Listresult for that.

Question:
---------
The result off of this Windows server looks very much like a Linux ls -l command result:

-rwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 1572 Sep 28 15:30 Config_2017-09-28.zip
drwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 0 Nov 13 19:30 AGIENG drwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 0 Nov 22 1:05 CVSREPOS drwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 0 Nov 11 15:44 FULLREPO

Is this how it always looks like or is there a way to format the list into something less Linux-ish?

I need to get a list of the files that match a specific format like: <name>_<date>.zip
I could of course traverse the supplied TStrings and look at the first char (discard all d entries) and check if the last part is .zip. But it would be a lot easier if the list could be limited to the filenames only.

The FTP.List() command has a number of overloaded versions and I have yet to find a working documentation of these. So in the absence of Remy Lebeau I am hard pressed to figure it out. And tracing down the Indy sources is not an easy task.
Maybe one of them will produce a simple file list only?

In fact the windows7 command line ftp client can do this:

ftp> ls CVS*.zip
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list. CVS_Config_2017-09-28.zip
226 Transfer complete.

Is there a corresponding way for IdFTP to perform a wildcard list and returning just the matching files?

For completeness:
-----------------
I received help on the Embarcadero forum which is back on-line, and the following command does what I need:

FTP.List('CVS*.zip', false);

The first argument is a file name specifier string including wildcard
* and the second is a flag to supply full information (true) or only the file names (false).
With this in place my utility works and the code is now much cleaner.