searching for a specific pattern on FTP and loading it to a folder

ftp_search_load.R

library(stringr)
library(RCurl)

#get current time string
thisMonth <- format(Sys.Date(),"%m")
thisYear  <- format(Sys.Date(),"%Y")
timeStamp <- paste0(thisMonth,thisYear)

#build a file pattern to search for by joining cluster names and timestamp
filePattern <- paste(c("EMC","LC"),timeStamp,sep="_",collapse="|")
filePattern

#get the FTP contents
fileNames <- getURL("ftp://ftp-domain.com", userpwd = "user:password", ftp.use.epsv = F,dirlistonly = T) 
fileNames <- unlist(str_split(fileNames,"\n"))
#extract files of interest
filesToLoad <- fileNames[str_detect(fileNames,filePattern)]

#if there are any matching files, download them to the server
if(length(filesToLoad)>0){
  for(i in filesToLoad){
    cmd <- paste0("curl -g ftp://user:[email protected]/",i," -o /where/to/put/the/data/",i)
    print(cmd)
    system(cmd)
  }
}