Lately I've been asked about doing FTP related stuff in .NET .

There appear to be many "Ftp Clients" out there on CodeProject and other sites.

I really don't get 'em.

They are simple a leaky abstraction on top of straightforward BCL classes.

So what my solution is?

   1:  public void Upload(string server, int port, string targetFolder, string fileName, string username, string password, bool isActive)
   2:  {
   3:      var url = string.Format(
   4:          "ftp://{0}:{1}{2}/{3}", server, port, targetFolder, fileName)
   5:      using (var ftp = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url))
   6:      {
   7:          ftp.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(username, password);
   8:          ftp.KeepAlive = false;
   9:          ftp.UseBinary = true;
  10:          ftp.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.UploadFile;
  11:          if (isActive)
  12:              ftp.UsePassive = false;
  13:   
  14:          using (var writer = new BinaryWriter(ftp.GetRequestStream()))
  15:              writer.Write(File.ReadAllBytes(fileName));
  16:      }
  17:  }

This basic notepad code covers most of the functionality in FtpWebRequest. You can easily set Binary/ASCII, Active/Passive, Credentials and whatnot.

Alternatively, in some cases you can just spawn a ftp.exe process with a simple ftp script. Anyway you can rid yourself from unneeded leaky abstractions.