Opening a remote file with TextWrangler

Question

My current solution for editing files on a remote web server is to use Fetch to browse the remote machine and TextWrangler to make the edits. But since I'm getting more comfortable navigating the command line on the remote machine (but not comfortable enough to use VIM...), I'd like to be able to type something like 'open filename.txt' on the remote machine and have TextWrangler open up on my local machine. I've heard the term "reverse tunneling" tossed around as an option, but I have no idea what to do next. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated - thanks!

Necker

Man, Text Wranger is so convenient with its ability to edit files over ssh and it's not exposed through the command line :( – Diedrediefenbaker

Answer 1

Personally, I use Cyberduck as my S/FTP browser. In Cyberduck's preferences, you can define a default text editor to edit remote files. Now I can just hit Cmd+K when I have a file selected, and it will open up in TextWrangler. Whenever I save, the changes are automatically transferred to the remote file.

Habilitate

Answer 2

I was actually looking to do the same thing, and no one had written it up, so I figured this out today.

There's 2 required and 3 optional parts to this:

1. Enable ssh login on both computers (required)
2. Set up an ssh tunnel from the remote machine to your machine (required)
3. Set up an alias for the ssh tunnel (optional)
4. Set up an alias for TextWrangler on the remote machine (optional)
5. Set up ssh keys so you don't have to enter your password every time (optional)

You need to be able to ssh from local to remote to run the commands, and you need to be able to ssh from remote to local so it can send commands to TextWrangler.

To set up the ssh tunnel, you need to run a command on your local machine like:

ssh -f -N -R 10022:localhost:22 [username on remote machine]@[remote machine hostname]

The -f and -N flags put ssh into the background and leave you on your machine. The -R flag binds a port on the remote computer to a port on your local computer. Anything contacting the remote machine on port 10022 will be sent to port 22 on your local computer. The remote port can be anything you want, but you should choose a port > 1024 to avoid conflicts and so you don't have to be root. I chose 10022 because it's similar to ssh's default port of 22. Replace the brackets with your username and machine name.

You'll need to run that once after you log in. To make the command easier on yourself, you can add an alias in your bash profile. Add the following to your local ~/.bash_profile:

alias open-tunnel='ssh -f -N -R 10022:localhost:22 [username on remote machine]@[remote machine hostname]'

Of course, you can choose whatever alias name you like.

Once you've set up the tunnel, you can use a command like this on the remote machine:

ssh -p 10022 [username on local machine]@localhost "edit sftp://[username on remote machine]@[remote machine hostname]//absolute/path/to/file.txt"

The -p flag says to use port 10022 (or whichever port you chose earlier). This will cause the remote machine to connect to your local machine and execute the command in the double quotes without opening an interactive ssh session. The command in the quotes is the command you would run on your local machine to open the remote file in TextWrangler.

To make the command easier on yourself, you can add a function in your bash profile. Add the following to your remote ~/.bash_profile:

function edit { if [[ ${1:0:1} = "/" ]]; then abs_path="$1"; else abs_path="`pwd`/$1"; fi; ssh -p 10022 [username on local machine]@localhost "edit sftp://[username on remote machine]@[remote machine hostname]/$abs_path"; }

This is assuming that you don't have the TextWrangler command line tools installed on the remote machine. If you do, you should name the function something other than edit. For example, tw. Here, ${1:0:1} looks at the first character of the first parameter of the function, which should be the file path. If it doesn't begin with /, we figure out the absolute path by adding the current working directory (pwd) to the beginning. Now, if you're on the remote machine in /home/jdoe/some/directory/ and you run edit some/other/directory/file.txt, the following will be executed on your local machine:

edit sftp://[username on remote machine]@[remote machine hostname]//home/jdoe/some/directory/some/other/directory/file.txt

Lastly, you should set up ssh keys in both directions so you're not prompted for a password every single time. Here's a guide someone else wrote: http://pkeck.myweb.uga.edu/ssh/

Hohenlinden

That looks like a nice solution. But what is the tunnel for? Can't you make the second ssh connection (the one that runs the edit command) directly to your computer instead of over this tunnel? – Gearbox

I like the approach here, even though it's intimidating. – Diedrediefenbaker

Answer 3

I dont think this will allow opening from the command-line, but

Eclipse with Remote-System-Explorer also supports editing of files via ssh connection

Hasa

Answer 4

I think what you're referring to is called "X11 forwarding" over ssh. Take a look at the ssh_config(5) manpage for configuration (or just use 'ssh' with the '-X' parameter). As far as i know, this does only work with X11 programs (gvim, xemacs, etc.), because the editor is actually running on the host you're connecting to - only the display stuff happens on your local machine. So TextWrangler is not an option, because it's not an X11 program.

I use Interarchy (from nolobe) for remote editing. It's a fairly advanced ftp/sftp client that gives you a finder-style view of your remote files and allows you to use your favourite editor to work on those files.

If you don't like to pay for such a program, there's an Open-Source program called "Fugu" available from the Univerity of Michigan which you can also use.

Ethelind

Answer 5

FileZilla offers this functionality as well. You can download it here. Once you've connected to your sftp you can right-click on the text file and open it with the text editor of your choice.

Mischance

Answer 6

Minimal answer

You can use Applescript. So from the command line execute this:

osascript  <<EOF
        tell application "TextWrangler"
        activate
        open location {"sftp://myusername:@my.server:22222//home/username/.bashrc"}
end tell
EOF

Notes

1. Obviously you wouldn't want to type a here document on every invocation, so my suggestion would be to put this logic inside a regular shell script: osascript <<EOF tell application "TextWrangler" activate open location {"$1"} end tell EOF

Then invoke the script like this:

sh ~/bin/textwrangler.sh "sftp://myusername:@my.server:22222//home/username/.bashrc" 

2. Specifying a host-qualified path can get tedious each time so either hardcode that in your script, or bind the script invocation to a keystroke via your shell. For bash: bind '"\et":"sh ~/bin/textwrangler.sh \"sftp://myusername:@my.server:22222/\""' Now you generate the majority of the command by pressing Alt-t

Diedrediefenbaker