SharePoint Consulting Blog

Sometimes, we need to deal with third party tools/applications from SharePoint Online. To deal with third party tools/applications, we may need a medium like SFTP server to pass data from SharePoint Online to third party tools/applications. In this blog, we are going to showcase - how to create xml/text file on SFTP server from SharePoint Online.

First, let's understand what's SFTP server and how it can be used to transfer data from SharePoint Online.

What is SFTP server?

SFTP - Secure File Transfer Protocol server, is popular method of transferring files between two remote systems over a secure connection. In this blog, we will see how to transfer data from one application - SharePoint Online to another remote server application (e.g. Workday).

Create file on SFTP server using Rest API & Web Service in SharePoint Online:

We can follow below steps to create file on SFTP server:

Step 1: Create a page in SharePoint Online and add custom button using HTML and JavaScript file. On Custom button click event, JavaScript file would call web service to create file on SFTP server.

Step 2: Create a web service (c#) using Visual studio.

Install “SSH.NET” package to deal with the SFTP server.
Find below code to connect SFTP server.

var client = new SftpClient("Server URL", "User Name", "Password");
client.Connect();

Then, stores incoming data into memory.

byte[] bArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(dataURL);
var memory = new MemoryStream(bArray);

Now, Upload/Create a file on SFTP server.

client.UploadFile(memory, "/Folder path /File Name", null);

At the end, close the connection with SFTP server.

client.Disconnect();
client.Dispose();

The complete code for SFTP server integration is as below:

[WebMethod]
[ScriptMethod(ResponseFormat = ResponseFormat.Json)]   
public string UploadFileToFTP(string data)
{
     var client = new SftpClient("Server URL", "User Name", "Password");
     client.Connect();
     byte[] bArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(dataURL);
     var memory = new MemoryStream(bArray);
     client.UploadFile(memory, "/Folder path /File Name", null);
     client.Disconnect();
     client.Dispose();
}

Step 3: Publish this web service on Microsoft Azure platform.

Step 4: Add following code to JavaScript reference file in SharePoint Online. In this step, we would get data from SharePoint Online list and pass data to web service to create file on SFTP server.

function MoveFileToSFTP()
{
     var DataURL = "'ServerURL'/FTPFileUpload.asmx/UploadFileToFTP";
     var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
     var Data = JSON.stringify(data);
     var params = "data="+Data+"";
     request.open('POST', DataURL, true);
     request.onreadystatechange = function() {
        var responsetext = request.responseText;
 if (request.readyState==4)
 {
    alert("File has been created successfully on SFTP server.");
 }
     };
     request.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-  form-urlencoded");
     request.setRequestHeader("Content-length", params.length);
     request.setRequestHeader("Connection", "close");
     request.send(params);
}