How to copy all files from a directory to a remote directory using scp?

If your goal is to transfer all files from local_dir the * wildcard does the trick:

$ scp ~/local_dir/* user@host.com:/var/www/html/target_dir

The -r option means “recursively”, so you must write it when you’re trying to transfer an entire directory or several directories.

From man scp:

-r 
Recursively copy entire directories. Note that scp follows symbolic links encountered in the tree traversal.

So if you have sub-directories inside local_dir, the last example will only transfer files, but if you set the -r option, it will transfer files and directories.

Appending /. to your source directory will transfer its contents instead of the directory itself. In contrast to the wildcard solution, this will include any hidden files too.

$ scp -r ~/local_dir/. user@host.com:/var/www/html/target_dir

Credit for this solution goes to roaima, but I thought it should be posted as an actual answer, not only a comment.

Follow these steps:

1. Copy directory local_dir with all its sub-directories:

   scp -r ~/local_dir user@host.com:/var/www/html/target_dir
   

2. copy only the contents of local_dir and not the directory local_dir itself:

   scp -r ~/local_dir/* user@host.com:/var/www/html/target_dir
   

3. Do not use: scp -r ~/local_dir/. user@host.com:/var/www/html/target_dir as it throws an error(just tested and received the following error):

   scp: error: unexpected filename: .
   

Also

rsync -avP ~/local_dir/ user@host.com:/var/www/html/target_dir/

should work.

And you can run it with -n at its end

rsync -avP ~/local_dir/ user@host.com:/var/www/html/target_dir -n

so that it simulates the operation and you can check that the result is what you wish for.