Using the FTP CLI Utility

To use the FTP command line utility run the command below.

ftp example.com

Connected to example.com.
220 ProFTPD Server (example.com FTP server)
Name (example.com): YOUR_USERNAME               
331 Password required for YOUR_USERNAME
Password:
230 User YOUR_USERNAME logged in
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.

Then enable passive mode:

ftp> passive
Passive mode on.

You can list files with ls or dir:

ftp> ls
227 Entering Passive Mode.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for file list
app.js	bin 	public_ftp   
backup	public_html  www_logs
226 Transfer complete

Pull a file down from the server with the get command:

ftp> get app.js
local: app.js remote: app.js
227 Entering Passive Mode (66,39,65,154,129,77).
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for app.js (338 bytes)
226 Transfer complete
338 bytes received in 0.00 secs (1.2446 MB/s)

Then disconnect and you can see you have the file on your client machine:

ftp> exit
221 Goodbye.

blue@Home:$~> cat app.js
const http = require('http');

const hostname = '127.0.0.1';
const port = 3000;
...

You run commands on your local machine through the ftp shell by prefixing a ! char:

ftp> !cat blah.txt
blah blah blah

To upload a file to a server use the put command:

ftp> put blah.txt
local: blah.txt remote: blah.txt
227 Entering Passive Mode (66,39,65,154,129,91).
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for blah.txt
226 Transfer complete
5 bytes sent in 0.00 secs (256.9901 kB/s)

And then if we check on the remote machine via ftp we can see:

johnlradford@www2:$~> cat blah.txt
fart

To see a help menu for ftp run help:

ftp> help lcd
lcd         change local working directory