Pywatchdog

Inotify is a Linux kernel subsystem that provides a mechanism for monitoring filesystem events. It was merged into the Linux kernel mainline in the kernel version 2.6.13 released on August 28, 2005.

inotify-tools is a set of command-line programs for Linux providing a simple interface to inotify and consists of two utilities:

• inotifywait simply blocks for inotify events, making it appropriate for use in shell scripts.

• inotifywatch collects filesystem usage statistics and outputs counts of each inotify event.

man-pages inotifywait reference

Pywatchdog is a simple python code that uses inotifywait for monitoring filesystem events from a python application in a easy way.

Dependencies

• Linux ≥ 2.6.13
• PyYAML

Installation

$ apt-get install inotify-tools

The installation as pip package not available yet.

Usage

from watch_dog import FileSystemWatchDog

def run():

    watch_dog = FileSystemWatchDog(['/home/test_01','/home/test_02'])

    try:

        watch_dog.release_the_watch_dog()

        input()

        result = watch_dog.get_caught_dams()

        if result is not None:
            for dam in result:
                print(dam.path)
                for event in dam.events:
                    print(event.__dict__)

    finally:
        watch_dog.hold_on_to_the_watch_dog()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    run()

input:

/home/test_01/
{'target': '.new_file.txt.swp', 'time': '02/07/17', 'events': 'CREATE'}
{'target': '.new_file.txt.swp', 'time': '02/07/17', 'events': 'DELETE'}
{'target': '.new_file.txt.swp', 'time': '02/07/17', 'events': 'MODIFY'}
{'target': 'new_file.txt', 'time': '02/07/17', 'events': 'MODIFY'}
/home/test_02/test_folder/
{'target': '.new_file_02.txt.swp', 'time': '02/07/17', 'events': 'CREATE'}
{'target': '.new_file_02.txt.swp', 'time': '02/07/17', 'events': 'DELETE'}
{'target': '.new_file_02.txt.swp', 'time': '02/07/17', 'events': 'MODIFY'}
{'target': 'new_file_02.txt', 'time': '02/07/17', 'events': 'MODIFY'}
{'target': 'new_file_02.txt', 'time': '02/07/17', 'events': 'DELETE'}

Contributing

It could be great to get feedback and coding improvements from you!