Using the following script, let's set up a local FTP server. Once you have installed the FTP Server such as VSFTPD or FileZilla, you can upload a file to the logged-in user's home directory. You can specify the server address, login credentials, and filename as the input argument of your script.

Listing 5.2 gives the FTP upload example as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env python 
# Python Network Programming Cookbook, Second Edition -- Chapter - 5 
# This program is optimized for Python 2.7.12 and Python 3.5.2. 
# It may run on any other version with/without modifications. 
 
import os 
import argparse 
import ftplib 
import getpass  
 
LOCAL_FTP_SERVER = 'localhost' 
LOCAL_FILE = 'readme.txt' 
 
def ftp_upload(ftp_server, username, password, file_name): 
    print ("Connecting to FTP server: %s" %ftp_server) 
    ftp = ftplib.FTP(ftp_server) 
    print ("Login to FTP server: user=%s" %username) 
    ftp.login(username, password) 
    ext = os.path.splitext(file_name)[1] 
    if ext in (".txt", ".htm", ".html"): 
        ftp.storlines("STOR " + file_name, open(file_name)) 
    else: 
        ftp.storbinary("STOR " + file_name, open(file_name, "rb"), 1024) 
    print ("Uploaded file: %s" %file_name) 
 
 
if __name__ == '__main__': 
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='FTP Server Upload Example') 
    parser.add_argument('--ftp-server', action="store", 
    dest="ftp_server", default=LOCAL_FTP_SERVER) 
    parser.add_argument('--file-name', action="store", 
    dest="file_name", default=LOCAL_FILE) 
    parser.add_argument('--username', action="store", 
    dest="username", default=getpass.getuser()) 
    given_args = parser.parse_args()  
    ftp_server, file_name, username = given_args.ftp_server,
     given_args.file_name, given_args.username 
    password = getpass.getpass(prompt="Enter you FTP password: ")  
    ftp_upload(ftp_server, username, password, file_name) 

If you set up a local FTP server and run the following script, this script will log in to the FTP server and then will upload a file. If a filename argument is not supplied from the command line by default, it will upload the readme.txt file:

$ python 5_2_upload_file_to_ftp_server.py 
Enter your FTP password: 
Connecting to FTP server: localhost
Login to FTP server: user=faruq
Uploaded file: readme.txt
    
$ cat /home/faruq/readme.txt 
This file describes what to do with the .bz2 files you see elsewhere on this site (ftp.kernel.org).