Description:

infi.watchdog 0.6.3

Python API and shell utilities to monitor file system events.

Example API Usage
A simple program that uses watchdog to monitor directories specified
as command-line arguments and logs events generated:
import sys
import time
import logging
from watchdog.observers import Observer
from watchdog.events import LoggingEventHandler

if __name__ == "__main__":
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO,
format='%(asctime)s - %(message)s',
datefmt='%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
path = sys.argv[1] if len(sys.argv) > 1 else '.'
event_handler = LoggingEventHandler()
observer = Observer()
observer.schedule(event_handler, path, recursive=True)
observer.start()
try:
while True:
time.sleep(1)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
observer.stop()
observer.join()


Shell Utilities
Watchdog comes with a utility script called watchmedo.
Please type watchmedo --help at the shell prompt to
know more about this tool.
Here is how you can log the current directory recursively
for events related only to *.py and *.txt files while
ignoring all directory events:
watchmedo log \
--patterns="*.py;*.txt" \
--ignore-directories \
--recursive \
.
You can use the shell-command subcommand to execute shell commands in
response to events:
watchmedo shell-command \
--patterns="*.py;*.txt" \
--recursive \
--command='echo "${watch_src_path}"' \
.
Please see the help information for these commands by typing:
watchmedo [command] --help

About watchmedo Tricks
watchmedo can read tricks.yaml files and execute tricks within them in
response to file system events. Tricks are actually event handlers that
subclass watchdog.tricks.Trick and are written by plugin authors. Trick
classes are augmented with a few additional features that regular event handlers
don’t need.
An example tricks.yaml file:
tricks:
- watchdog.tricks.LoggerTrick:
patterns: ["*.py", "*.js"]
- watchmedo_webtricks.GoogleClosureTrick:
patterns: ['*.js']
hash_names: true
mappings_format: json # json|yaml|python
mappings_module: app/javascript_mappings
suffix: .min.js
compilation_level: advanced # simple|advanced
source_directory: app/static/js/
destination_directory: app/public/js/
files:
index-page:
- app/static/js/vendor/jquery*.js
- app/static/js/base.js
- app/static/js/index-page.js
about-page:
- app/static/js/vendor/jquery*.js
- app/static/js/base.js
- app/static/js/about-page/**/*.js
The directory containing the tricks.yaml file will be monitored. Each trick
class is initialized with its corresponding keys in the tricks.yaml file as
arguments and events are fed to an instance of this class as they arrive.
Tricks will be included in the 0.5.0 release. I need community input about them.
Please file enhancement requests at the issue tracker.



Installation
Installing from PyPI using pip:
pip install watchdog
Installing from PyPI using easy_install:
easy_install watchdog
Installing from source:
python setup.py install

Installation Caveats
The watchmedo script depends on PyYAML which links with LibYAML,
which brings a performance boost to the PyYAML parser. However, installing
LibYAML is optional but recommended. On Mac OS X, you can use homebrew
to install LibYAML:
brew install libyaml
On Linux, use your favorite package manager to install LibYAML. Here’s how you
do it on Ubuntu:
sudo aptitude install libyaml-dev
On Windows, please install PyYAML using the binaries they provide.



Documentation
You can browse the latest release documentation online.


Supported Platforms

Linux 2.6 (inotify)
Mac OS X (FSEvents, kqueue)
FreeBSD/BSD (kqueue)
Windows (ReadDirectoryChangesW with I/O completion ports;
ReadDirectoryChangesW worker threads)
OS-independent (polling the disk for directory snapshots and comparing them
periodically; slow and not recommended)

Note that when using watchdog with kqueue, you need the
number of file descriptors allowed to be opened by programs
running on your system to be increased to more than the
number of files that you will be monitoring. The easiest way
to do that is to edit your ~/.profile file and add
a line similar to:
ulimit -n 1024
This is an inherent problem with kqueue because it uses
file descriptors to monitor files. That plus the enormous
amount of bookkeeping that watchdog needs to do in order
to monitor file descriptors just makes this a painful way
to monitor files and directories. In essence, kqueue is
not a very scalable way to monitor a deeply nested
directory of files and directories with a large number of
files.


About using watchdog with editors like Vim
Vim does not modify files unless directed to do so.
It creates backup files and then swaps them in to replace
the files you are editing on the disk. This means that
if you use Vim to edit your files, the on-modified events
for those files will not be triggered by watchdog.
You may need to configure Vim to appropriately to disable
this feature.


Dependencies

Python 2.5 or above.
XCode (only on Mac OS X)
PyYAML
argh
select_backport (select.kqueue replacement for Python2.5/2.6 on BSD/Mac OS X)
pathtools



Licensing
Watchdog is licensed under the terms of the Apache License, version 2.0.
Copyright 2011 Yesudeep Mangalapilly.
Copyright 2012 Google, Inc.
Project source code is available at Github. Please report bugs and file
enhancement requests at the issue tracker.


Why Watchdog?
Too many people tried to do the same thing and none did what I needed Python
to do:

pnotify
unison fsmonitor
fsmonitor
guard
pyinotify
inotify-tools
jnotify
treewalker
file.monitor
pyfilesystem

License

For personal and professional use. You cannot resell or redistribute these repositories in their original state.

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