PyCharm 2017.3 Help

Creating a Remote Server Configuration

A remote server is a server on another computer (remote host).

To configure access to the server in this set-up, you need to specify the following:

  1. Connection settings: server host, port, and user credentials.
  2. The server configuration root folder and the URL address to access it.
  3. Correspondence between the project root folder, the folder on the server to copy the data from the project root folder to, and the URL address to access the copied data on the server. This correspondence is called mapping.

Creating a server configuration: specifying its name, type, and visibility

  1. Open the Deployment page by doing one of the following:
    • Open the Settings / Preferences Dialog by pressing Ctrl+Alt+S or by choosing File | Settings for Windows and Linux or PyCharm | Preferences for macOS, and click Deployment under Build, Execution, Deployment.
    • Choose Tools | Deployment | Configuration on the main menu.
  2. In the left-hand pane, that shows a list of all the existing server configurations, click the Add toolbar button add.png. The Add Server dialog box opens.
  3. Specify the server configuration name in the Name text box. From the Type drop-down list, choose the server configuration type depending on the protocol you are going to use to exchange the data with the server.
    • FTP: choose this option to have PyCharm access the server via the FTP file transfer protocol.
    • SFTP: choose this option to have PyCharm access the server via the SFTP file transfer protocol.
    • FTPS: choose this option to have PyCharm access the server via the FTP file transfer protocol over SSL (the FTPS extension).

    When editing the server configuration name in the Name text box, use the Up and Down keys on your keyboard to change the preselected server access to type in the Type drop-down list.

  4. Use the Visible only for this project checkbox to configure the visibility of the server access configuration (deployment configuration).
    • Select the checkbox to restrict the use of the configuration to the current project. Such configurations cannot be reused outside the current project, they do not appear in the list of available configurations in other projects. For example, if this checkbox is selected in an SFTP configuration, you cannot use your SSH credentials from it when you configure a remote interpreter.
    • When the checkbox is cleared, the configuration is visible in all PyCharm projects and the settings from, including SSH credentials, can be reused.
  5. Click OK. The Add Server dialog box closes and you return to the Connection tab of the Deployment dialog box.

    Click the Use as Default toolbar button icon_use_web_server_configuration_as_default.png to have PyCharm silently apply the current configuration in the following cases:

Specifying user credentials defined during registration on the host

  1. Specify the registration mode:
    • To login in a regular mode, specify the login in the User name text box.
    • To enable anonymous access to the server with your email address as password, select the Login as anonymous checkbox.
  2. Specify the way to authenticate to the server:
    • For FTP server, type your password and select the Save password checkbox to have PyCharm remember it.
    • For SFTP server, choose the way to authenticate to the server. Do one of the following:
      • To access the host through a password, choose Password from the Auth type drop-down list, specify the password, and select the Save password checkbox to have PyCharm remember it.
      • To use SSH authentication via a key pair, choose Key pair (OpenSSH or PuTTY). To apply this authentication method, you need to have your private key on the client machine and your public key on the remote server you connect to. PyCharm supports private keys generated using the OpenSSH utility.

        Specify the path to the file where your private key is stored and type the passphrase (if any) in the corresponding text boxes. To have PyCharm remember the passphrase, select the Save passphrase checkbox.

      • If your SSH keys are managed by a credentials helper application (for example, Pageant on Windows or ssh-agent on Mac and Linux), choose Authentication agent (ssh-agent or Pageant).
    • For FTPS server, specify your user name and password and choose the security mechanism to apply.
      • Choose Explicit to have the explicit (active) security applied. Immediately after establishing connection, the FTP client on your machine sends a command to the server to establish secure control connection through the default FTP port.
      • Choose Implicit to have the implicit (passive) security applied. In this case, security is provided automatically upon establishing connection to the server which appoints a separate port for secure connections.

Enabling connection to the server and specifying the server configuration root

  1. Specify the host name of the FTP/SFTP/FTPS server to exchange data with and the port to which this server listens. The default values are:
    • 21 for FTP and FTPS
    • 22 for SFTP
  2. In the Root path text box, specify the server configuration root relative to your user home which was defined when you registered your account. This folder will be the highest one in the folder structure accessible through the current server configuration. Do one of the following:
    • Accept the default value /, which points at the user home folder on the server.
    • Type the path manually.
    • Click the Browse button browseButton.png and select the desired folder in the Choose Root Path dialog box that opens.
    • Click the Autodetect button and have PyCharm detect the user home folder settings on the FTP/SFTP server and set up the root path according to them. The button is only enabled when you have specified your user name and password.
  3. In the Web server root URL text box, type the URL address to access the server configuration root ( The server configuration root is the highest folder in the file tree on the local or remote server accessible through the server configuration. For in-place servers, it is the project root. ). Both the HTTP and the HTTPS protocols are supported.

    To access a server through HTTPS, you need to acquire a certificate file <certificate_name>.cert signed by a recognized authority and import this certificate in the truststore/keystore of the Oracle JRE (Java Runtime Environment) on which PyCharm runs. Note that self-signed certificates are rejected as unsafe.

    To import a certificate in Oracle JRE:

    1. Open the embedded Terminal and type the following command:
      <jre_home>/bin/keytool.exe -importcert -keystore <path to jre truststore/keystore> -file <full_path_to_<cert_name>.cert>
      If you are using the Oracle JRE bundled with PyCharm, the default path to the truststore/keystore is <%product_installation_folder>/jre/jre/lib/security/jssecacerts or <%product_installation_folder>/jre/jre/lib/security/cacerts.

      Otherwise it is <jre_home>/jre/lib/security/jssecacerts or <jre_home>/jre/lib/security/cacerts.

    2. When asked to enter a password for the truststore/keystore, specify the default one changeit.
    3. Open the PyCharm.exe.vmoptions file in the <PyCharm_installation_folder>/bin and add the following line to it:
      -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStore=<path to keystore>
    4. Restart PyCharm.

    Learn more at Java6 and Java7.

  4. Click the Open button to make sure that the specified URL address is accessible and points at the correct Web page.

Mapping local folders to folders on the server and the URL addresses to access them

Configure mappings, that is, set correspondence between the project folders, the folders on the server to copy project files to, and the URL addresses to access the copied data on the server. The easiest way is to map the entire project root folder to a folder on the server, whereupon the project folder structure will be repeated on the server, provided that you have selected the Create Empty directories checkbox in the Options dialog box. "For more details, see Customizing Upload/Download.

  1. Switch to the Mappings tab.
  2. In the Local Path text box, specify the full path to the desired folder in the project tree. In the simplest case it is the project root.
  3. In the Deployment Path text box, specify the folder on the server where PyCharm will upload the data from the folder specified in the Local Path text box. Type the path to the folder relative to the server configuration root. If the folder with the specified name does not exist yet, PyCharm will create it, provided that you have selected the Create Empty directories checkbox in the Options dialog box. For more details, see Customizing Upload/Download.
  4. In the Web Path text box, type the path to the folder on the server relative to the server configuration root. Actually, type the relative path you typed in the Deployment Path text box.

Overloading the deployment destination by configuring nested mappings

You can configure separate mappings for a specific folder under the your project root to have the contents of this folder synchronized with another location on the remote host.

Suppose you have configured the mappings as follows:

Local PathDeployment Path
<project_root> ftp://.../htdocs/my_project
<project_root>/my_folder ftp://.../htdocs/my_folder
Then the files in your project will be uploaded as follows:
Local PathDeployment Path
<project_root>/file1.js ftp://.../htdocs/my_project/file1.js
<project_root>/my_folder/file2.js ftp://.../htdocs/my_folder/file2.js
instead of ftp://.../htdocs/my_project/my_folder/file2.js
Last modified: 28 March 2018

See Also