sftppathlib

sftppathlib uses pathlib_abc and paramiko to create a pathlib API for SFTP clients.

The documentation is the same as the standard pathlib library, with some differences.

Changelog

• 0.5.5 / 2025-12-27: Fixed .parents not working. Removed PurePath inheritance.
• 0.5.4 / 2025-12-20: Fixed rename.

Differences

The methods expanduser(), readlink(), hardlink_to, replace(), owner(), group(), from_uri(), as_uri() are not supported. Subsequently, any method in pathlib_abc which relies on these will also fail. For some of them, it's because they don't have any meaning on SFTP clients, others because I don't trust myself to implement them correctly.

The methods stat(..., follow_symlinks), symlink_to(..., target_is_directory), chmod(..., follow_symlinks) have their named parameters ignored, since Paramiko's SFTPClient does not support them.

Some of Paramiko's SFTPClient methods would return status codes like SFTP_OK; these are ignored.

Usage

The sftppathlib relies on an instance of an SFTPClient to be used. This can be either be created in the background using the default setup, or manually and passing it to the __init__ constructor.

With setup

The default connection will use Paramiko's SSHClient to connect. If you are only connecting to one SFTP server, it's recommended to create a config file in the application directory:

• Windows: ~/AppData/Roaming/sftppathlib/config.ini
• Linux: ~/.local/share/sftppathlib/config.ini
• Apple: ~/Library/Application Support/sftppathlib/config.ini

The file should be the parameters passed to paramiko.SSHClient.connect.

[example.com]
root: /
hostname: sftp.<domain>
port: 22
username: <username>
password: <password>

It will also use the key defined in ~/.ssh/known_hosts. This will typically include an entry starting with [sftp.<domain>]:22.

After this, sftppathlib.SFTPPath can be used like pathlib.Path:

from sftppathlib import SFTPPath

root = SFTPPath("sftp://example.com")
path = root / "hello.txt"

path.write_text("hello world", encoding="utf-8")
print(path.read_text(encoding="utf-8"))

for child in root.iterdir():
    print(child)

Note: All urls will be passed through urllib.parse.urlparse, and the netloc (authority) attribute will be replaced with a prefix that is prepended to the path attribute. By default all configs will be cached, but this can be disabled by setting sftppathlib.CACHING = False.

Note: The protocol (sftp) will be ignored. It suffices to write "https://example.com" or "//example.com", but urllib.parse.urlparse expects at least //.

Without setup

New 0.5.2: It is also possible to pass the credentials explicitly.

from sftppathlib import SFTPPath

CREDENTIALS = {
    "root": "/",
    "hostname": "sftp.<domain>",
    "port": 22,
    "username": "<username>",
    "password": "<password>",
}

root = SFTPPath.from_config("sftp://example.com", config=CREDENTIALS)
path = root / "hello.txt"

path.write_text("hello world", encoding="utf-8")
print(path.read_text(encoding="utf-8"))

for child in root.iterdir():
    print(child)

Note: The CREDENTIALS variable should be imported from another file or a module; never include secrets in code.

Note: Both the protocol (sftp) and authority (example.com) will be ignored. It suffices to write "//*". The authority is only used to look up the config/client.

import paramiko
from sftppathlib import SFTPPath

CREDENTIALS = {
    "hostname": "sftp.<domain>",
    "port": 22,
    "username": "<username>",
    "password": "<password>",
}

ssh_client = paramiko.SSHClient()
ssh_client.load_system_host_keys()
ssh_client.connect(**CREDENTIALS)

sftp_client = paramiko.sftp_client.SFTPClient.from_transport(
    ssh_client.get_transport())
sftp_client.root = "/"


root = SFTPPath("sftp://example.com/", accessor=sftp_client)

...

If many instances are needed, it can be beneficial to subclass SFTPClient and create a Path method:

...

class SFTPPathClient(paramiko.sftp_client.SFTPClient):
    def Path(self, path, *paths):
        return SFTPPath(path, *paths, accessor=self)


sftp_path_client = SFTPPathClient.from_transport(
    ssh_client.get_transport())


root = sftp_path_client.SFTPPath("sftp://root/")

...

Closing connections

It is assumed that you want to keep the connections open during the duration of the program. If not, please use SFTPClient.close() and SSHClient.close().

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the paramiko/contributors and the pathlib-abc/contributors. This extends to anyone involved with the standard pathlib library, but I cannot find the list.