Single line sftp from terminal

Update Sep 2017 - tl;dr

Download a single file from a remote ftp server to your machine:

sftp {user}@{host}:{remoteFileName} {localFileName}

Upload a single file from your machine to a remote ftp server:

sftp {user}@{host}:{remote_dir} <<< $'put {local_file_path}'

Original answer:

Ok, so I feel a little dumb. But I figured it out. I almost had it at the top with:

sftp user@host remoteFile localFile

The only documentation shown in the terminal is this:

sftp [user@]host[:file ...]sftp [user@]host[:dir[/]]

However, I came across this site which shows the following under the synopsis:

sftp [-vC1 ] [-b batchfile ] [-o ssh_option ] [-s subsystem | sftp_server ] [-B buffer_size ] [-F ssh_config ] [-P sftp_server path ] [-R num_requests ] [-S program ] host sftp [[user@]host[:file [file]]] sftp [[user@]host[:dir[/]]]

So the simple answer is you just do : after your user and host then the remote file and local filename. Incredibly simple!

Single line, sftp copy remote file:

sftp username@hostname:remoteFileName localFileNamesftp kyle@kylesserver:/tmp/myLogFile.log /tmp/fileNameToUseLocally.log

Update Feb 2016

In case anyone is looking for the command to do the reverse of this and push a file from your local computer to a remote server in one single line sftp command, user @Thariama below posted the solution to accomplish that. Hat tip to them for the extra code.

sftp {user}@{host}:{remote_dir} <<< $'put {local_file_path}'

To UPLOAD a single file, you will need to create a bash script. Something like the following should work on OS X if you have sshpass installed.

Usage:

sftpx <password> <user@hostname> <localfile> <remotefile>

Put this script somewhere in your path and call it sftpx:

#!/bin/bashexport RND=`cat /dev/urandom | env LC_CTYPE=C tr -cd 'a-f0-9' | head -c 32`export TMPDIR=/tmp/$RNDexport FILENAME=$(basename "$4")export DSTDIR=$(dirname "$4")mkdir $TMPDIRcp "$3" $TMPDIR/$FILENAMEexport SSHPASS=$1sshpass -e sftp -oBatchMode=no -b - $2 << !   lcd $TMPDIR   cd $DSTDIR   put $FILENAME   bye!rm $TMPDIR/$FILENAMErmdir $TMPDIR

Or echo 'put {path to file}' | sftp {user}@{host}:{dir}, which would work in both unix and powershell.