Skip to main content

Filesystem events monitoring

Project description

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
from watchdog.observers import Observer
from watchdog.events import LoggingEventHandler

if __name__ == "__main__":
    path = sys.argv[1]
    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. 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)

Dependencies

  1. Python 2.5 or above.

  2. XCode (only on Mac OS X)

  3. PyYAML

  4. argh

  5. select_backport (select.kqueue replacement for Python2.5/2.6 on BSD/Mac OS X)

  6. pathtools

  7. Brownie

Licensing

Watchdog is licensed under the terms of the MIT License.

Copyright (C) 2010 Gora Khargosh and the Watchdog authors.

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:

Project details


Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

watchdog-0.5.3.tar.gz (69.9 kB view details)

Uploaded Source

File details

Details for the file watchdog-0.5.3.tar.gz.

File metadata

  • Download URL: watchdog-0.5.3.tar.gz
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 69.9 kB
  • Tags: Source
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No

File hashes

Hashes for watchdog-0.5.3.tar.gz
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 d1baa0a5f43931b6601e4566e8256e17571b4a34d86510cd18985e73f098bade
MD5 092fdabd8810922468a7e9fdcfa42520
BLAKE2b-256 d4bd70541069ce875ffd9cf5ff996edf2ba1fa27b8096bb26c7a1d97252a469f

See more details on using hashes here.

Supported by

AWS AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Datadog Monitoring Fastly Fastly CDN Google Google Download Analytics Microsoft Microsoft PSF Sponsor Pingdom Pingdom Monitoring Sentry Sentry Error logging StatusPage StatusPage Status page