I set up sftp using openssh service on windows server 2022. I can connect with the sftp server from a client using Filezilla. My question is, is a sftp-client software like filezilla always necessary to connect to the sftp server or is there any other way to connect for instance over Windows explorer or web browser?
I used to connect to my intern ftp server over explorer and web browser. but sftp doesn't let connect like this...
What is your thoughts?
21 Answer
The tool you use to connect to a server must support the protocol required by the server. For a web server that protocol is HTTP or HTTPS and web browsers, as the tool of choice to connect to web servers, have support for the HTTP and HTTPS protocols built in.
For historic reasons and probably because FTP is a really simple protocol many web browsers also have/had that native FTP protocol support built in.
The SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is neither that simple, nor does it have the same historic legacy, and thus support for that protocol is (usually) not built into web browsers. Since SFTP also not really a common/native/appropriated Microsoft protocol, no support for that protocol is included in the default MS (client) tools/libraries either.
Therefor you will need to launch a separate client that does support the SFTP protocol to successfully connect to an SFTP server.
Once that client is installed it should be able to register itself as the correct URI handler for SFTP links and launch automatically when you encounter a sftp_URI such as sftp://user@host/dir/path/file.txt (with fewer or more parameters as defined here).
