auto detect file in a folder

Question

Sorry wasn't sure how to best word this question.

My scenario is that I have some python code (on a linux machine) that uses an xml file to acquire its arguements to perform a task, on completion of the task it disposes of the xml file and waits for another xml file to arrive to do it all over again.

I'm trying to find out the best way to be alerted an xml file has arrived in a specified folder.

On way would be to continually monitor the folder in the Python code, but that would mean a lot of excess resourses used while waiting for something to turn up (which may be as little as a few times a day). Another way, would be to set up a cronjob, but it's efficiency would't be any better than monitoring from within the code. An option I was hoping was possible would be to set up some sort of interrupt that would alert the code when an xml file appeared.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Have you looked at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/597903/monitoring-files-directories-with-python — Seth Carnegie, Dec 16 '11 at 00:59

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 16 '11 at 01:01

If you're looking for something "easy" to just run a specific script when new files arrive, the incron daemon provides a very handy combination of inotify(7) and cron(8)-like support for executing programs on demand.

If you want something a little better integrated into your application, or if you can't afford the constant fork(2) and execve(2) of the incron approach, then you should probably use the inotify(7) interface directly in your script. The pyinotify module can integrate with the underlying inotify(7) interfaces.

Thanks for that, I've never used inotify before, but it looks like it does what I'm after, so I'll have a read. Thank you. — user788462, Dec 16 '11 at 01:45

auto detect file in a folder

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