Date in list is incorrect

Calling list() is returning the wrong date. It’s an hour off (at least here on a danish computer GMT+2) and its missing seconds. Calling lastMod() returns the right date. My guess is that the missing precision is due to the ftp command LIST is not showing the seconds, but the hour off should be fixed in my oppinion.

[maximethebault]

As far as I know, the library is relying on the raw data returned by the command and doesn’t try to figure out the timezone on its own (you should check the raw data returned by the LIST command, I suspect they’ll be one hour off as well). The issue is not caused by the library directly, but because of the FTP protocol itself, and more particularly because of the LIST command, which has very loose specifications. The LIST command basically returns the output of a “ls” command and is not designed to handle timezones!

Two possible fixes :

• issue a lastMod() on a specific file to get its UTC timestamp, compare it with the time returned by list() for this same file, compute the difference and apply it to all the times returned by the list command. This fix is/was used on some ftp clients (FlashFXP is one of them if I remember well), but is to my opinion out of the scope of this library as it implies a lot of hidden commands, and requires at least one file/directory to be present on the FTP server. But feel free to implement this fix in the code that uses the library.
• the recommended way: use the MLSD command, which returns UTC time (see the RFC: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3659). It’s the only reliable way to deal with timezones. Unfortunately, it’s not available on all FTP servers. In such case, you’ll have to use the first fix as fallback.

NB: lastMod() issues a “MDTM” command, which returns an UTC timestamp. If it’s available on your FTP server, MLSD will probably be available as well since they were both defined in the same RFC (even though “MDTM” was around before being formalized into a RFC).

[HalfdanJ]

I’ve created a simple listMlsd function in my fork here: https://github.com/halfdanj/node-ftp It’s very basic, but is it something you want @mscdex?