Light weight, cross platform, file system watcher.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'feather_watch'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install feather_watch

require "feather_watch"
callback = lambda{|e| puts "Event #{e[:status]} on file #{e[:file]}"}
paths_to_watch = "/" #can be a string or array of string, eg: ["/home/data", "/home/pictures"]
watcher = FeatherWatch.new(paths_to_watch, callback)
watcher.start #non-blocking

#To stop:
watcher.stop

• :added
• :modified
• :removed

Events on OSx, also known as darwin, is current an approximation as the underlying libraries does not currently support actual events. Thus on OSx, you get :removed if the file received does not exist by checking File.file?(the_file). If it does exist you get :modified. So you will not get any :added events on OSx.

Feather Watch will receive very many file events, even for temp files. Care should be taken when handling the events. Make sure to only process what you need. For instance, you should check against temp-files, and skip those events. Example:

#black list approach
un_accepted_file_types = ["tmp", "cache", "db"]
callback = lambda{|e| use_event(e) unless un_accepted_file_types.include?(e[:file].split(".")[-1])} 

#white list approach
accepted_file_types = ["png", "jpg", "jpeg", "gif"]
callback = lambda{|e| use_event(e) if accepted_file_types.include?(e[:file].split(".")[-1])}

You need to take care to filter out what you do not need for each target platform.

All tests succeed individually on Windows, however, if they are run at the same time usring the command rspec some of the tests fail. This is due to file locking which is currently unresolved.

MIT

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/stephan-nordnes-eriksen/feather_watch/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request