Read Site Manager

Explicit file

import {getSiteManager} from '@jalsoedesign/filezilla-core';

const sites = getSiteManager('C:/Users/example/AppData/Roaming/FileZilla/sitemanager.xml', {
    includePasswords: false,
});

Reading and parsing are synchronous. The reader validates XML well-formedness, root/container shapes, required site fields, singleton fields, integer ranges and boolean settings. Missing files, malformed/truncated XML, invalid records and DTD/entity declarations are rejected. Errors identify a site/field or XML location without echoing credential text. This is a supported-field validator, not a complete implementation of every FileZilla schema version.

Host, Port, Protocol and Name are required. Ports must be integers from 1 to 65535. Unknown protocol IDs within the accepted metadata range can be inventoried, but that does not create a connector for them. Supported defaults and ranges are in the API reference.

Automatic location

getDefaultSiteManager() returns the first existing file from:

1. %APPDATA%/FileZilla/sitemanager.xml when APPDATA is set.
2. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/filezilla/sitemanager.xml, or $HOME/.config/filezilla/sitemanager.xml.
3. $HOME/.filezilla/sitemanager.xml for older installations.

It accepts no read options and loads supported passwords by default. Use an explicit path with includePasswords: false for inventory.

Credentials and serialization

Input/option	Behavior
Plain text or encoding="plain"	Exact credential text, including surrounding whitespace, is preserved
encoding="base64"	Valid base64 is decoded to UTF-8; decoded whitespace is preserved
Protected/other encodings	Password omitted; passwordEncoding retained
includePasswords: false	No passwords in normalized records
credentialPath omitted	All supported credentials may be loaded
credentialPath: server.path	Load only that exact canonical identity
Empty credentialPath	Matches no valid site; it no longer means unrestricted loading

includePasswords: false takes precedence. The original XML tree is not retained. JSON.stringify(manager) produces {servers: [...]} with metadata only; JSON.stringify(server) omits password and leaves remote-directory metadata encoded. Explicit property APIs remain credential-bearing when credentials were requested.

Base64 is not encryption. Protected passwords are not decrypted. A missing password can be excluded, unsaved or unsupported; an explicitly empty password is preserved as an empty string. The reader does not save, edit or write back Site Manager files.

Identity and construction

Names are normalized once before selection. Each component escapes % as %25 and / as %2F; duplicate canonical paths fail before credentials are decoded. Folder-tree labels remain readable decoded names. Both singleton and array forms of Server and Folder are accepted by the public constructor, including mixed nesting.

Username strings preserve leading zeros and surrounding whitespace. Passive-mode and charset aliases are mapped deliberately; other metadata remains distinct from enforced connector settings. See Server and querying.