Import of .ark.gz files (from Nitrado FTP)

[TinkerTob]

Hi,

I have the same issue as previously discussed in #883 (ASB import via FTP always gets savegame from last server restart).

The reason is that Nitrado doesn't update the actual save file (e.g. Fjordur.ark) while the server is running, but instead creates compressed backup files (e.g. Fjordur_27.09.2022_10.09.03.ark.gz).

I have contacted Nitrado support and they are unable (or unwilling) to change this.

This could be accounted for by a simple workaround in ASB which:

1. Connects to the specified FTP folder
2. Downloads the newest .ark.gz file in the folder
3. Decompresses it (resulting in an .ark file)
4. Imports the file as usual

It would be great if someone could look into this... I would be willing to do so myself, but I'd have to learn C# first and I don't think I'll find the time.

Thank you!

[TinkerTob]

Update:

While scrolling through a7c5540 (the commit which originally added the FTP functionality), i noticed that this workaround is already implemented!

However, it is neither apparent nor documented, and even throws an error when using it:
The way I understand it (and applied it successfully), if you use an asterisk in the file name when entering an FTP path, it treats the filename as a pattern and searches the most recent match. But ASB doesn't seem to like that.

Also, it looks as if the file change date doesn't always match the time denoted in the file name. E.g., in the above screenshot, the save from 10:09 seems to be newer than the one from 12:01. Maybe it would be possible to extract the date from the file name and use the file info as a fallback? I don't know if C# has the ability to reliably recognize and parse different time formats, but it should work in theory.

[cadon]

Hi, thanks for pointing this out! The messagebox is only a warning (which will be removed when there's an asterix in the filepath in the next release), you can still enter what you want and it should fetch the latest file that matches the pattern.
In your case ftp://…/arkse/ShooterGame/Saved/SavedArk/Fjordur_*.ark.gz should work.
Regarding the issue that the newest file by the file timestamp is in fact not the newest file can certainly resolved by a more advanced pattern input, I'll put that on the todo list.

[cadon]

So with the latest release (v0.50.5) you should be able to use ftp://…/Fjordur_(?<g3>\d+)\.(?<g2>\d+)\.(?<g1>\d+)_(?<g4>[\d\.]+)\.ark.gz to import the latest file (only the part after the last / is parsed as a regex, so slashes, dots etc before don't need to be escaped). Let me know if that's not working.

[TinkerTob]

Thank you for looking into this so quickly!

There seems to be one little bug left: The last / of the path seems to get caught up in the regex.
ftp://.../Fjordur_(?<g3>\d+)\.(?<g2>\d+)\.(?<g1>\d+)_(?<g4>[\d+\.]*)\.ark.gz
doesn't work (and neither does ftp://.../Fjordur_*.ark.gz, which kinda worked before)

But ftp://...//Fjordur_(?<g3>\d+)\.(?<g2>\d+)\.(?<g1>\d+)_(?<g4>[\d+\.]*)\.ark.gz (using an additional / for the target directory) works.

[cadon]

When testing this on a local ftp server it works fine. I haven't tested it on a remote ftp-server, maybe the path parts work differently then.