monitoring a directory

[Guy Robinson]

Cheers Tim, that's the ticket. Perfect!!!

Regards,

Guy

>>What would be the most efficient or 'clever' way to monitor a 
>>directory 
>>for file additions/ modifications on windows?
>>
>>Currently I'm looping through the directory with a 1 sec delay. But 
>>doesn't seem that clever.
> 
> 
> There are two methods that I know of (apart from the simple approach you
> describe). One is described in this recipe:
> 
> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/156178
> 
> This is simple to use, but falls down a bit if you have more than a few
> files in the directory, since it doesn't know what's changed. It's fine if
> you're just happy to rescan, say for a file-manager app.
> 
> The other method, which is a bit more sophisticated, uses the
> recently-added-to-pywin32 win32file.ReadDirectoryChangesW functionality.
> Example follows. (I keep meaning to send this up as a recipe, but I never
> quite seem to manage). In essence, ReadDirectoryChangesW returns a list of
> tuples, each of which is an (action, filename) pair. The actions -- by
> experiment -- are held in the ACTIONS dictionary. A rename will always give
> a list of two tuples, one with the before and one with the after. Other
> compound actions (such as deleting a set of files) may also give a
> more-than-one list of tuples. Play around with it. It works.
> 
> <code>
> 
> import os
> import sys
> import time
> 
> import win32file
> import win32con
> 
> ACTIONS = {
>   1 : "Created",
>   2 : "Deleted",
>   3 : "Updated",
>   4 : "Renamed to something",
>   5 : "Renamed from something"
> }
> ## 1 - create
> ## 2 - delete
> ## 3 - update (including security change)
> ## 4 & 5 - before & after on a rename
> 
> try: path_to_watch = sys.argv[1] or "."
> except: path_to_watch = "."
> path_to_watch = os.path.abspath (path_to_watch)
> 
> print "Watching %s at %s" % (path_to_watch, time.asctime ())
> 
> FILE_LIST_DIRECTORY = 0x0001
> 
> hDir = win32file.CreateFile (
>     path_to_watch,
>     FILE_LIST_DIRECTORY,
>     win32con.FILE_SHARE_READ | win32con.FILE_SHARE_WRITE,
>     None,
>     win32con.OPEN_EXISTING,
>     win32con.FILE_FLAG_BACKUP_SEMANTICS,
>     None
> )
>    
> while 1:
>   results = win32file.ReadDirectoryChangesW (
>     hDir,
>     1024,
>     True,
>     win32con.FILE_NOTIFY_CHANGE_FILE_NAME | 
>      win32con.FILE_NOTIFY_CHANGE_DIR_NAME |
>      win32con.FILE_NOTIFY_CHANGE_ATTRIBUTES |
>      win32con.FILE_NOTIFY_CHANGE_SIZE |
>      win32con.FILE_NOTIFY_CHANGE_LAST_WRITE |
>      win32con.FILE_NOTIFY_CHANGE_SECURITY,
>     None,
>     None
>   )
>   print '-*-*-*'
>   for action, file in results:
>     full_filename = os.path.join (path_to_watch, file)
>     if os.path.isdir (full_filename):
>       file_type = 'folder'
>     else:
>       file_type = 'file'
>     print file_type, file, ACTIONS.get (action, "Unknown")
> 
> </code>
> 
> TJG
> 
> ________________________________________________________________________
> This e-mail has been scanned for all viruses by Star Internet. The
> service is powered by MessageLabs. For more information on a proactive
> anti-virus service working around the clock, around the globe, visit:
> http://www.star.net.uk
> ________________________________________________________________________
>