Paulo Guimaraes (guimaraes@moore.sc.edu) would like to download data from an FTP site directly into Stata: > I would like to know if it is possible to read data directly from an ftp > site. > My interest in this is because I need to access some flat files at the BLS > web site. > Right now what I do is to open the file in my web browser and then save it > and insheet it into Stata. > For example, to read the employment time series for the state of Alabama I > need to open the file in my web browser > with the command: > ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/time.series/sm/sm.data.1.Alabama > and then save it and read it into Stata. > Is it possible to read the data directly from within Stata? Anders Alexandersson (andersalex@gmail.com) suggested that it may be possible to do this directly in Stata: > I don't think you need to resort to mapping. The user manual [U] 28.2 > suggests the Stata -copy- command for sharing other files than Stata > datasets (for which -use- is a direct solution). Although the URL > examples are for http, and I have not tried ftp, ftp is another type > of URL so it should work. Stata currently supports only the 'http' protocol for accessing files on the internet. URLs beginning with 'ftp://' and protocols other than 'http://' are not supported. Paulo should be able to do as Austin Nichols (austinnichols@gmail.com) suggested: > There are probably several platform-specific approaches. One is to > "map an ftp server as a drive" or whatever the equivalent operation is > in your OS. In various flavors of Windows, there are several apps > that can map a drive letter to an ftp server, at which point the > standard infiling commands should work fine. Depending on the operating system Paulo is using, command-line utilities such as 'curl' or 'wget' may also be available which support downloading data using a variety of protocols, including ftp. Paulo could use Stata's -shell- command to access such a command to download a file via ftp. Alan (ariley@stata.com)