fsdetect - a simpler API to pyinotify

This project doesn't aim to replace pyinotify, just offers a simpler API for some situations.

Works on python >= 2.6, but not on python 3 yet.

Usage

To detect if a file was created inside a directory:

from fsdetect import Detector

def on_create(event):
    print event.pathname

detector = Detector('/tmp/files')
detector.on('create', on_create)

# from now on every `IN_CREATE` event will be detected, to
# fire the handlers use:
detector.check()

.check() method should be called periodically, easier to hook in your own loop and runs in the same thread.

This works for every inotify event, just translate the syntax from IN_CREATE to create.

Handling IN_MOVED_FROM and IN_MOVED_TO

inotify uses a pair of events to detect if a file was moved: IN_MOVED_FROM and IN_MOVED_TO. 'move' simplifies this:

from fsdetect import Detector

def on_move(event):
    print event.pathname or '<unknown destination>'
    print event.src_pathname or '<unknown source>'

detector = Detector('/tmp/files')
detector.on('move', on_move)

# move some files...
detector.check()

on_move will be called in one of these conditions:

• a file was moved inside the '/tmp/files', something like mv /tmp/files/old.txt /tmp/files/new.txt. In this case src_pathname = '/tmp/files/old.txt' and `pathname = '/tmp/files/new.txt'
• a file was moved from outside into the watched directory, like mv /tmp/old.txt /tmp/files/new.txt. In this case src_pathname = None and pathname = '/tmp/files/new.txt'
• a file was moved from inside the watched directory to outside, like mv /tmp/files/old.txt /tmp/new.txt. In this case src_pathname = '/tmp/files/old.txt' and pathname = None

In order to implement this behaviour in the third case, a IN_MOVED_FROM event is detected but the handler is not called until the next event arrived, to be able to verify if the destination will be known or not.

Ignoring hidden files and directories

Hidden files and directories are automatically ignored. The internal pyinotify WatchManager instance is configured to ignore hidden paths, so they are not watched.

But if a hidden file is created (or any other event) inside a watched directory there is no way to tell pyinotify to don't watch this file (see this issue for details). fsdetect handles this case ignoring the received events related to hidden files.

Contributing

Create a fork of the repository on github, make your changes and send a pull request. Make sure your feature/bugfix has enough test coverage.

Inside your fork directory, preferably using a virtualenv, install the package for development plus the test dependencies:

$ pip install -e .
$ pip install -r requirements-dev.txt

Run the tests:

$ ./runtests