In this section, we are going to learn about the sendcmd() function. We can use the sendcmd() function to send a simple string command to the server to get the String response. The client can send FTP commands such as STAT, PWD, RETR, and STOR. The ftplib module has multiple methods that can wrap these commands. The commands can be sent using the sendcmd() or voidcmd() methods. As an example, we are going to send a STAT command to check the status of a server.

Create a send_command.py script and write the following content in it:

from ftplib import FTP

ftp = FTP('your-ftp-domain-or-ip')
ftp.login('your-username','your-password')

ftp.cwd('/home/student/')
s_cmd_stat = ftp.sendcmd('STAT')
print(s_cmd_stat)
print()

s_cmd_pwd = ftp.sendcmd('PWD')
print(s_cmd_pwd)
print()

ftp.close()

Run the script as follows:

student@ubuntu:~/work$ python3 send_command.py

You will get the following output:

211-FTP server status:
     Connected to ::ffff:192.168.2.109
     Logged in as student
   TYPE: ASCII
     No session bandwidth limit
     Session timeout in seconds is 300
     Control connection is plain text
     Data connections will be plain text
     At session startup, client count was 1
     vsFTPd 3.0.3 - secure, fast, stable
211 End of status
 
257 "/home/student" is the current directory

In the preceding code, we first mentioned the IP address, username, and password of the other machine. Next, we used the sendcmd() method for the STAT command to the other machine. Then, we used sendcmd() for the PWD command.