folder_watcher

folder_watcher is a standalone library that listens to changes made to files inside a folder (add, edit or remove).

Table of contents

• Table of contents
• Compatibility
• Tutorial
  • Including
  • Basic usage

Compatibility

This library is tested and compiles with C++20 on:

• Windows
  • Clang
  • MSVC
• Linux
  • Clang
  • GCC
• MacOS
  • Clang

Tutorial

Including

To add this library to your project, simply add these two lines to your CMakeLists.txt:

add_subdirectory(path/to/folder_watcher)
target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} PRIVATE folder_watcher::folder_watcher)

Then include it as:

#include <folder_watcher/folder_watcher.hpp>

Basic usage

The library is really use to use. First of all, create a FolderWatcher instance. A FolderWatcher needs a path (for the watched folder) and some configurations. You will also need to provide some callbacks (in order to react to the changes) to the update() method.

The callbacks can be created as follows:

auto const callbacks = folder_watcher::Callbacks{
    .on_file_added   =        [](std::filesystem::path const& path) { std::cout << "File added: " << path.string() << '\n'; },
    .on_file_removed =        [](std::filesystem::path const& path) { std::cout << "File removed: " << path.string() << '\n'; },
    .on_file_changed =        [](std::filesystem::path const& path) { std::cout << "File changed: " << path.string() << '\n'; },
    .on_invalid_folder_path = [](std::filesystem::path const& path) { std::cout << "Folder path invalid: " << path.string() << '\n'; }
};

The default configuration is the following:

auto const config = folder_watcher::Config{
    .watch_all_subfolders_recursively = true,
    .seconds_between_checks = 0.5f,
};

You can still easily tweak it as you wish.

Now, you need to create your Folder Watcher :

auto folder_watcher = folder_watcher::FolderWatcher{watched_path, config};

If you're not modifying the default configuration, you can create the folder watcher like so:

auto folder_watcher = folder_watcher::FolderWatcher{watched_path};

Finally, you just need to call the update method in your main loop.

folder_watcher.update(callbacks);