ftp connection attempt returns -2

Hey Edwin,

It's a bit weird that no TLS is set, but the error says "This server does not support ftp over tls”.

Statuscode -2 in the GUI code means 'Unsuccessful_InvalidUrl’, but I'm not sure why it would give this error, because you said the URL is 100% valid.

Is there anyway you could add a Thinkwise user to the FTP so we can do some tests here?

It is safer to add a ticket in TCP and give us the credentials there.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Kind Regards,

Roel

Hello @Edwin Saan or @Roel 

Any news on this issue?

We ran into the same error….

Situation looks a lot like with yours @Edwin Saan 

Hi Marc, it’s a while ago but we managed to get it work and it’s working over a year now every day without issues. We’ll have contact soon, wo we can discuss this as well

@Roel / @Edwin Saan 

Same problem here...

I have tried various URL formats:

XX.XXX.XX.XX           (IP Address)
ftp://XX.XXX.XX.XX
ftp.domain_name.nl
ftp://ftp.domain_name.nl
ftp://domain_name.nl

But still get the Status code -2 as response

The FTP server is setup correctly, because with Filezilla it works fine

I can't get any further on the basis of the documentation, because it is far too limited. Why are examples almost never given in the documentation?

The TCP issue number described the following solution:

When using STOR you need to put the entire path to the file inside the URL parameter.

In your case this would be ftp://ftp.inone.nl/test.txt .

The "New file name" field is only used in combination with "Rename directory (RENAME)" (which contrary to how it is called can also be used to rename a specific file).

Do note that any missing directories need to be created up front.

E.g. doing a STOR on ftp://ftp.inone.nl/somedir/test.txt will throw an error if "somedir" does not exist.

Also since you are using the username and password fields you will probably need to set Authentication type to Basic.

If you run the Windows GUI in developer mode and open the Debug window after executing the FTP connector, there might be more information in there about any errors that have occurred.

I hope this helps.

The documentation generally focuses on how to configure things and focuses less on the practical application as the challenges you can encounter when interacting with external systems are quite varied and it is difficult to scope this to relevant use cases which are actually used by our community.

The community is a good place to dive deeper into this. Unfortunately, this item was resolved as a ticket so the resolution wasn’t publicized.

Hi Anne, 

Thank you, this will hopefully lead to a working solution, but up till now, no success.

The message which I receive now is ”Unable to connect to the remote server”. So I have to investigate further what is going wrong here. It takes ages because the debug information I get with the Windows GUI is very limited.

By the way, I disagree and think that this paragraph ..."If you use STOR, you must put the full path to the file in the URL parameter. In your case, this is ftp://ftp.inone.nl/test.txt." … is crucial information for almost anyone who is setting up an FTP connection to upload files and should be in the documentation. In general, adding one or more examples in the documentation clarifies a lot, and is much more efficient than getting the information from different places to come to a working solution. 

This morning Edwin Saan showed me his solution, which is very similar to my setup. 

The only difference is that his application is running on 2021.2 and in the documentation I have seen that the FTP connector cannot be used with the WinGUI or Universal GUI. 

 @Anne Buit can you verify this?

Hello Harm,

The FTP connector works in the Windows GUI, the Web GUI and Indicium Universal (which means it works in the Universal GUI and in system flows as well).

The documentation which you are referencing is about “starting points”. An FTP connector cannot be a starting point for a user flow in a GUI, because there is no corresponding GUI action. What this means is that if you want to trigger an FTP connector in a GUI, it must be preceeded by, for example, a task.

System flows, however, have a time-based trigger instead of a user action trigger, so in a system flow the FTP connector can be a starting action.

I hope this helps.

Hi Vincent,

Yes, this is clear to me.

Thank you. I will investigate further.