Detect new directory?

Question

I want to monitor a network drive path and detect any new directory copied there or not and then automatically copy that whole directory to my local drive.

I have the following things in mind:

1. create a python script which can maintain the no of files in the network drive path and save it to local temp file.

2. I will run my script every 2/3 Hrs and compare the current number of directories with the last count. If the current number is more than the previous number, simply copy those directories and paste to local directory. By this simple way I can find out there are any new directories or not, correct?

But, I was wondering if there is any other better method or powerful library present in python so that I can just easily detect newly copied directory in a network path.

Answer 1

I am using this library to monitor file system changes - https://github.com/gorakhargosh/watchdog/

Simplest example given in the link

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()

Which means that you can custom your own logic to "save to local temp file" and to "compare the current number of directories with the last count".