FTP Task in WF and TFS

Now that I have custom MSBuild tasks working using WF (and kicking them off using TFS), I realized that I DON”T want to use custom MSBuild tasks.  It seems easier just to put in a custom WF task as part of the bdefult build template that comes out of the box in TFS.  To that end, I created a new template and identified the step where I would put in this new workflow task (it took 5 minutes to click through this TFS WF, it is a beast!):

I then created a new project to get the FTP tasks working.  Before using WF, I thought of just creating a Console app that does what I want. I monkeyed around with the the native .NET FTP library but is stinks and then I tried FTPLibrary – which didn’t work out of the box. I then tried EditFTP and it worked great so I used that.  I created a structured program that uses the Edit FTP API to copy the contents from the build directory to the FTP site (oooh, recursion):

        static FTPConnection ftpConnection = null;
        static string hostName = @"ftp.xxx.com";
        static string userName = "xxx";
        static string password = "xxx";
        static string sourceLocation = @"xxx";
        static string targetLocation = "xxx";
 
        static void Main()
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Start");
            ConfigureFTPConnnection();
            CopyDirectoryContents(sourceLocation, targetLocation);
            Console.WriteLine("End");
            Console.ReadKey();
        }
 
 
        static void ConfigureFTPConnnection()
        {
            ftpConnection = new FTPConnection();
            ftpConnection.UserName = userName;
            ftpConnection.Password = password;
            ftpConnection.ServerAddress = hostName;
            ftpConnection.Connect();
        }
         
 
        static void CopyDirectoryContents(string sourceDirectoryName, string targetDirectoryName)
        {
            DirectoryInfo directoryInfo = new DirectoryInfo(sourceDirectoryName);
            ftpConnection.ChangeWorkingDirectory(targetDirectoryName);
            foreach (FileInfo fileInfo in directoryInfo.GetFiles())
            {
                ftpConnection.UploadFile(fileInfo.FullName, fileInfo.Name);
            }
 
            foreach (DirectoryInfo subDirectoryInfo in directoryInfo.GetDirectories())
            {
                ftpConnection.CreateDirectory(subDirectoryInfo.Name);
                CopyDirectoryContents(subDirectoryInfo.FullName, subDirectoryInfo.Name);
            }
            ftpConnection.ChangeWorkingDirectoryUp();
            
        }

Pretty simple stuff – note the use of ChangingWorkingDirectoryUp to keep the current directory on the remote site synched.

I then thought about how to create a WF class that does the same thing.  To do that, I fired up a VS2010 Activity diagram.  My 1st cut was WAAY too complicated:

I refined it based on the fact that my FTP API automagically overwrites files:

Much easier.  I then created a workflow activity (with its .asmx extension).  I realized that I would simply throw a code activity on to the designer, move the procedureal code I already wrote into that activity, and call it a a day.  However, I wanted to see if I can exploit the power of WF and replicate the activity diagram using workflow tasks.  I’ll document my experiences with that attempt next week.