Another ftp_get_contents approach, using a temperary stream handler. Returns file contents as string. 

<?php
function ftp_get_contents ($conn_id, $filename,
//Create temp handler:
    $tempHandle = fopen('php://temp', 'r+');

//Get file from FTP assuming that it exists:
    ftp_fget($conn_id, $tempHandle, $filename, FTP_ASCII, 0));

    //Getting detailed stats to check filesize:
    $fstats = fstat($tempHandle);

    return fread($tempHandle, $fstats['size']);
}
?>

<?php
/** 
 * Function returns contents via FTP connection and returns it as string (right version...)
 */
function ftp_get_contents ($conn_id, $filename) {
    //Create temp handler:
    $tempHandle = fopen('php://temp', 'r+');
    
    //Get file from FTP:
    if (@ftp_fget($conn_id, $tempHandle, $filename, FTP_ASCII, 0)) {
        rewind($tempHandle);
        return stream_get_contents($tempHandle);
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}
?>

if you are using windows ftp-server with cp1251 encoding there are some troubles with russian "я" in filename\path.

php use telnet to connect ftp-server and there are special symbol with code 255 in telnet protocol. You can try use ftp_raw($connection, 'OPTS UTF8 ON'); and work in utf-8 (if server provides it).

P.S. sorry for my bad english

You might need to use ftp_pasv() if you're behind a firewall and receiving odd timeouts, file creation but now local data saving, etc.

I was in need to synchronize two folders on two separate servers, one is a Windows server, and the other is a Linux server. I created this short and sweet function to help me do this. PLEASE NOTICE: This will not copy folders, and probably will fail if remote folder contains anything else than files.

function sync_folders($host, $port, $username, $password, $remote_dir, $local_dir, $passive_mode = true) {
    $conn_id = ftp_connect($host, $port);
    if (!$conn_id) return false; # fail to connect
    if (!ftp_login($conn_id, $username, $password)) { ftp_close($conn_id); return false; }  # fail to login
    ftp_pasv($conn_id, $passive_mode);
    if (!ftp_chdir($conn_id, $remote_dir)) { ftp_close($conn_id); return false; } # fail to change dir
    if (substr($local_dir, -1) != '/') $local_dir .= '/';

    $list = ftp_nlist($conn_id, '.');
    sort($list);
    foreach ($list as $file) {
        if (!file_exists($local_dir . $file)) {
            $is_copied = ftp_get($conn_id, $local_dir . $file, $file, FTP_BINARY);
        }
    }
    ftp_close($conn_id);
    return true;
}

If you suply only a filename to the second parameter of function the ftp_get will open a pointer to the local file creating it and write to it.It's ok if your server dont execute for to mutch time and you dont get too many files but if you do it too many times the pointers created by ftp_get will not be closed and will end your opened files capacity at your server making it to do not open any more files until you restart it.