WinSCP .NET Assembly and COM Library

The WinSCP .NET assembly winscpnet.dll is a .NET wrapper around WinSCP’s scripting interface that allows your code to connect to a remote machine and manipulate remote files over SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, S3 and SCP sessions from .NET languages, such as C#, VB.NET, and others, or from environments supporting .NET, such as PowerShell, SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), ASP.NET and Microsoft Azure WebSite.

The assembly is also exposed to COM, and as such it can be used from variety of other programming languages and development environments–e.g., WSH-hosted active scripting languages like JScript and VBScript, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), Perl, and Python.

The assembly targets .NET Framework 4.0 and .NET Standard 2.0.

The library is primarily intended for advanced automation tasks on Microsoft Windows that require conditional processing, loops or other control structures for which the basic scripting interface is too limited.

You can also use the assembly to write scripts that extend functionality of WinSCP GUI.

The library is not a general purpose file transfer library. It particularly has a limited support for an interactive processing, and as such it is not well suited for use in GUI applications.

For the same reason it is also difficult to use the assembly within a restricted environment like a web server, that limits or even restricts execution of external processes.

First you need to download and install the assembly.

1. Create an instance of the WinSCP.SessionOptions class and fill in all necessary information to allow an automatic connection and authentication of your session.
2. Create an instance of the WinSCP.Session class. Optionally you can hook handlers of some events of the class.
3. Open the session using Session.Open method, passing instance of your WinSCP.SessionOptions.

Once the session is opened, you can use any of the WinSCP.Session methods to manipulate remote files, e.g.,

• Session.GetFiles to download files,
• Session.PutFiles to upload files or
• Session.SynchronizeDirectories to synchronize directories.

Namespace: WinSCP

You can have WinSCP generate a code template for you.

See list of all examples.

There are also other C# examples.

using System;
using WinSCP;
 
class Example
{
public static int Main()
{
try
{
// Setup session options
SessionOptions sessionOptions = new SessionOptions
{
    Protocol = Protocol.Sftp,
    HostName = "example.com",
    UserName = "user",
    Password = "mypassword",
    SshHostKeyFingerprint = "ssh-rsa 2048 xxxxxxxxxxx...="
};
 
using (Session session = new Session())
{
    // Connect
    session.Open(sessionOptions);
 
    // Upload files
    TransferOptions transferOptions = new TransferOptions();
    transferOptions.TransferMode = TransferMode.Binary;
 
    TransferOperationResult transferResult;
    transferResult =
        session.PutFiles(@"d:\toupload\*", "/home/user/", false, transferOptions);
 
    // Throw on any error
    transferResult.Check();
 
    // Print results
    foreach (TransferEventArgs transfer in transferResult.Transfers)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Upload of {0} succeeded", transfer.FileName);
    }
}
 
return 0;
}
catch (Exception e)
{
Console.WriteLine("Error: {0}", e);
return 1;
}
}
}

There are also other VB.NET examples.

Imports WinSCP
 
Friend Class Example
 
Public Shared Function Main() As Integer
 
Try
' Setup session options
Dim sessionOptions As New SessionOptions
With sessionOptions
    .Protocol = Protocol.Sftp
    .HostName = "example.com"
    .UserName = "user"
    .Password = "mypassword"
    .SshHostKeyFingerprint = "ssh-rsa 2048 xxxxxxxxxxx...="
End With
 
Using session As New Session
    ' Connect
    session.Open(sessionOptions)
 
    ' Upload files
    Dim transferOptions As New TransferOptions
    transferOptions.TransferMode = TransferMode.Binary
 
    Dim transferResult As TransferOperationResult
    transferResult =
        session.PutFiles("d:\toupload\*", "/home/user/", False, transferOptions)
 
    ' Throw on any error
    transferResult.Check()
 
    ' Print results
    For Each transfer In transferResult.Transfers
        Console.WriteLine("Upload of {0} succeeded", transfer.FileName)
    Next
End Using
 
Return 0
Catch e As Exception
Console.WriteLine("Error: {0}", e)
Return 1
End Try
 
End Function
 
End Class

See overall PowerShell example or any other PowerShell example.

See overall JScript example or any other JScript example.

See overall VBScript example or any other VBScript example.

See overall VBA example.

See overall Perl example.

See overall SSIS example.

When you find yourself limited by scripting capabilities, you may consider converting your script to code that uses WinSCP .NET assembly.

The WinSCP .NET Assembly is a free library: you can use it, redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Mozilla Public License Version 2.0.

Because WinSCP uses the GPL license it’s important to keep the GPL license file around.1 Your software doesn’t have to be licensed under GPL as the WinSCP .NET Assembly is using WinSCP as an executable, via its public scripting interface, and not as a library.

1. Simply said, keep all files from WinSCP-X.X.X-Automation.zip package together.Back