Scripting/Automation

Following commands are implemented: cd, chmod, close, exit, get, help, keepuptodate, lcd, lls, ln, lpwd, ls, mkdir, mv, open, option, put, pwd, rm, rmdir, session, synchronize and several aliases.

Command help <command> shows comprehensive description of the command including examples and aliases.

Multiple sessions can be opened simultaneously. Use session command to switch among them. Commands can be read from script file.

By default interactive mode is used (user is prompted in the same way as in GUI mode). To switch to batch mode (all prompts are automatically answered negatively) use command option batch on. For the batch mode it is recommended to turn off confirmations using option confirm off to allow overwrites (otherwise the overwrite confirmation prompt would be answered negatively, making overwrites impossible).

WinSCP returns exit code 1, when any command is interrupted due to an error or any prompt is answered Abort (even automatically in batch mode). Otherwise it returns exit code 0.

As WinSCP3.exe is GUI application, it cannot inherit console window when run from other console application (like Windows command-prompt). To allow this, run WinSCP using console interface tool, WinSCP3.com (you can find WinSCP3.com in the main installation package).

If you are going to run the script under different account (for example using Windows scheduler), note that WinSCP stores configuration to user part of Windows Registry by default. So you may need either to transfer the configuration from your account registry to the other account registry or use INI file instead.

The example below connects to example.com server with account user, downloads file and closes the session. Then it connects to the same server with account user2 and upload the file back.

option batch on
option confirm off
open user@example.com
cd /home/user
option transfer binary
get examplefile.txt d:\
close
open user2@example.com
cd /home/user2
put d:\examplefile.txt 
close
exit

Save the script to file example.txt. To execute the script file use following command. As the script connects the session itself, using command open, omit the session command-line parameter.

winscp3 /console /script=example.txt

If you want to first open a session that you have saved via the GUI, then add the name of you session as below.

winscp3 /console /script=example.txt saved_session

Now you can omit the open command in your script file because you are now connected.