I'm trying to use watchdog to run a sync script whenever anything changes in a dir (except for one specific file). I simply copied the code from the readme (pasted below), which does what it says; log which file has changed.
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()
I now want to run a function (which syncs the whole folder to a remote machine) whenever anything changes. So I just replaced event_handler
with my own function. But that gives me the following error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/threading.py", line 810, in __bootstrap_inner
self.run()
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/watchdog/observers/api.py", line 199, in run
self.dispatch_events(self.event_queue, self.timeout)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/watchdog/observers/api.py", line 368, in dispatch_events
handler.dispatch(event)
AttributeError: 'function' object has no attribute 'dispatch'
Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong here? All tips are welcome!
ps. I also want to exclude one file in the folder from being watched. Any ideas how I should do that?
You need to subclass and do whatever you want in dispatch:
import sys
import time
import logging
from watchdog.observers import Observer
from watchdog.events import LoggingEventHandler
class Event(LoggingEventHandler):
def dispatch(self, event):
print("Foobar")
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 = Event()
observer = Observer()
observer.schedule(event_handler, path, recursive=True)
observer.start()
try:
while True:
time.sleep(1)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
observer.stop()
observer.join()
If you run the code you will see Foobar
outputted whenever a change is detected, to ignore files you may need to use [events.PatternMatchingEventHandler][1]. There are various methods in each
To do something when a something is modified case we can override on_modified
:
class Event(LoggingEventHandler):
def on_modified(self, event):
print("Doh")
And running the code using the class above with event_handler = Event()
and changing a file will output something like:
Doh
Doh
Doh
Doh
Doh
Doh
Doh
2015-10-03 15:33:55 - Created file: ./test.txt___jb_bak___
2015-10-03 15:33:55 - Moved file: from ./test.txt to ./test.txt___jb_old___
2015-10-03 15:33:55 - Moved file: from ./test.txt___jb_bak___ to ./test.txt
2015-10-03 15:33:55 - Deleted file: ./test.txt___jb_old___
Doh
[1]: http://pythonhosted.org/watchdog/api.html#watchdog.events.PatternMatchingEventHandler EventHandler
class you can override, it all depends on what it is you want to do. The LoggingEventHandler
class itslef is a subclass of watchdog.events.FileSystemEventHandler
:
class watchdog.events.FileSystemEventHandler
Bases: object
Base file system event handler that you can override methods from.
dispatch(event)
Dispatches events to the appropriate methods.
Parameters: event (FileSystemEvent) – The event object representing the file system event.
on_any_event(event)
Catch-all event handler.
Parameters: event (FileSystemEvent) – The event object representing the file system event.
on_created(event)
Called when a file or directory is created.
Parameters: event (DirCreatedEvent or FileCreatedEvent) – Event representing file/directory creation.
on_deleted(event)
Called when a file or directory is deleted.
Parameters: event (DirDeletedEvent or FileDeletedEvent) – Event representing file/directory deletion.
on_modified(event)
Called when a file or directory is modified.
Parameters: event (DirModifiedEvent or FileModifiedEvent) – Event representing file/directory modification.
on_moved(event)
Called when a file or a directory is moved or renamed.
Parameters: event (DirMovedEvent or FileMovedEvent) – Event representing file/directory movement.