FileZilla Download Issue

FileZilla is one of the best FTP clients ever, however while they’re perfect, everybody else isn’t.

What this means is that if an FTP site isn’t configured correctly, then trying to download files that have special characters or accents in them using the FileZilla client will fail. The FileZilla team don’t want to support it because they’re doing the correct thing standards wise (UTF-8 settings on the server) and it’s other people’s failings that are causing the problem, but other clients Do support this kind of behaviour e.g. firefox which is a shame…

This means that we do need to find a way around the problem with FileZilla, the first sign that something has gone wrong will be in your failed downloads tab.

A quick glance at the file usually shows you that there is a special character or accent in it, in this case a “À”.

To get round this, I found the easiest way is merely to select all of the items that have failed, right click then export them.



This will give you an XML file, open it up and look for the “File” sections, then find and replace the special characters in the “localFile” section with a none special character, save the file then import it into fileZilla (file –> Import), you will find that it will download all missing files.

It would be nice if there was an automated version of this but as far as I can tell the FileZilla guys are sticking to standards. 🙁

<File>
    <LocalFile>/mnt/Slow/DownLoads/Anime/Series/Ongoing/Kirakira Precure A La Mode/[anon] KiraKira Precure À La Mode - 47 [1280x720].mkv</LocalFile>
    <RemoteFile>[anon] KiraKira Precure À La Mode - 47 [1280x720].mkv</RemoteFile>
    <RemotePath>1 0 5 Anime 6 Series 7 Ongoing 26 Kirakira Precure A La Mode</RemotePath>
    <Download>1</Download>
    <Size>571273852</Size>
    <ErrorCount>1</ErrorCount>
    <DataType>1</DataType>
</File>