Directory transfers with Paramiko

You'll need to do this just like you would locally with python (if you weren't using shutils).

Combine os.walk(), with sftp.mkdir() and sftp.put(). You may also want to check each file and directory with os.path.islink() depending on whether you want to resolve symlinks or not.

You can subclass paramiko.SFTPClient and add the following method to it:

import paramiko
import os

class MySFTPClient(paramiko.SFTPClient):
    def put_dir(self, source, target):
        ''' Uploads the contents of the source directory to the target path. The
            target directory needs to exists. All subdirectories in source are 
            created under target.
        '''
        for item in os.listdir(source):
            if os.path.isfile(os.path.join(source, item)):
                self.put(os.path.join(source, item), '%s/%s' % (target, item))
            else:
                self.mkdir('%s/%s' % (target, item), ignore_existing=True)
                self.put_dir(os.path.join(source, item), '%s/%s' % (target, item))

    def mkdir(self, path, mode=511, ignore_existing=False):
        ''' Augments mkdir by adding an option to not fail if the folder exists  '''
        try:
            super(MySFTPClient, self).mkdir(path, mode)
        except IOError:
            if ignore_existing:
                pass
            else:
                raise

To use it:

transport = paramiko.Transport((HOST, PORT))
transport.connect(username=USERNAME, password=PASSWORD)
sftp = MySFTPClient.from_transport(transport)
sftp.mkdir(target_path, ignore_existing=True)
sftp.put_dir(source_path, target_path)
sftp.close()

Here's my piece of code:

import errno
import os
import stat

def download_files(sftp_client, remote_dir, local_dir):
    if not exists_remote(sftp_client, remote_dir):
        return

    if not os.path.exists(local_dir):
        os.mkdir(local_dir)

    for filename in sftp_client.listdir(remote_dir):
        if stat.S_ISDIR(sftp_client.stat(remote_dir + filename).st_mode):
            # uses '/' path delimiter for remote server
            download_files(sftp_client, remote_dir + filename + '/', os.path.join(local_dir, filename))
        else:
            if not os.path.isfile(os.path.join(local_dir, filename)):
                sftp_client.get(remote_dir + filename, os.path.join(local_dir, filename))


def exists_remote(sftp_client, path):
    try:
        sftp_client.stat(path)
    except IOError, e:
        if e.errno == errno.ENOENT:
            return False
        raise
    else:
        return True