SFTP server in Node.js

I have a project that I want to start working on but first needed to create a quick proof-of-concept (POC) to make sure I can do what I wanted. I was about 99% sure what I want to do is possible, just that 1% is due to never doing it. So the POC was to create a SFTP server that saved public keys in a database like GitHub does. I know you can install an ssh server and use the AuthorizedKeysCommand but if possible, I wanted to do everything within Node.js, not install another server onto my server.

First thing most people do, off to search npm. I quickly found the ssh2 module which seemed to have active development still (GitHub repo started in August 2012 and still has commits from a couple days ago). After setting up example server and client scripts, I needed to get a file downloaded from the server. I did have a bit of trouble with this but mscdex gave me a boost, much obliged! So I got a file downloading and even got it to authenticate based on private/public keys reading from my filesystem. Looking at the code, it's async so I knew I could do this by saving it in a MySQL database and it's was extremely easy.

I've setup a simple example GitHub repo. The server is server.js and a test client script is in client_test.js. You'll have to change some configs in both scripts. You'll also need to setup the table I use, this is what I have:

CREATE TABLE `user_public_keys` (
    `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `username` varchar(200) NOT NULL,
    `name` varchar(25) NOT NULL,
    `key` text NOT NULL,
    `added` datetime NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
  ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Once you setup the MySQL connection details in server.js you'll be able to read from the table. You'll have to generate an RSA host key, check out keys/README.md, it's a simple command but pay attention to where it wants to save the file, I placed it at keys/host_rsa.

Not sure what other steps are needed but that should be it. Some configs in server.js and client_test.js, MySQL table, host key and of course the npm install command to install module dependencies. Should be able to start the server (node server) and then try the client script (node client_test) and it should download the file. The server will remain up and you should see some logs that show the OPEN, FSTAT, READ and CLOSE steps.