Recursive directory download with Paramiko?

Question

I want to download a directory with unknown contents recursively via SSH and have been trying Paramiko. I have seen several examples how to upload directories but none that

Answer 1

An old question, but a solution I came up with that works quite well, it's a little bit sloppy (typecasting and slashes and all) - but it does work.

Note this uses fabric.api.local to make the directories in the destination.

def sftp_get_recursive(path, dest, sftp=sftp):
    item_list = sftp.listdir(path)
    dest = str(dest)

    if not os.path.isdir(dest):
        local("mkdir %s" % dest)

    for item in item_list:
        item = str(item)

        if is_directory(path + "/" + item, sftp):
            sftp_get_recursive(path + "/" + item, dest + "/" + item, sftp)
        else:
            sftp.get(path + "/" + item, dest + "/" + item)