Heya guys, i've got a problem with a project i'm trying to put together.

Due to the nature of the project i'm playing with, i've got lots of
files coming into my system at almost random times and I need a way to
kick off a program to process those files when they come in (or soon
after).

I'm currently using LaunchPad but it doesn't do a very good job of it
(large files can begin processing twice and hang the program, so you
have to set processing to suspend until the program has finished
executing what task it was told to, unfortunately that can stop other
processing that is required from happening etc etc bad bad bad, also
it sometimes changes the parameters on executable files for no reason,
causing headaches!) and unfortunately quickness of processing is an
important factor so I can't use Windows Scheduler (which is a nasty
piece of work anyway, was NOT meant for large scale scheduling
IMHO)...

Anyway, I would really appreciate it if anybody with any ideas would
throw them at me, I also need a program that can watch a file and
notify me when it updates in a more friendly way, a File Watching
Program basically...

Thanks for any input in advance,

Cheers!

PS: I'm not 100% scared to do a little C++ or C# programming if
totally necessary, so the Windows API hooks that play well with
noticing if a file has changed would be greatly appreciated,
especially in C# form.

Cheers (Again!)

---

Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 30 Oct 2006 14:26 PST

kiwwa...

Sysinternals has a FileMon program which monitors in realtime
and logs all changes to all files and file events on the system.
You can use filters to limit the tremendous amount of information
it produces:
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html


TawbaWare offers another program which might work for you:
http://www.tawbaware.com/filemon.htm


Let me know where this takes you...

sublime1-ga

---

Clarification of Question by kiwwa-ga on 30 Oct 2006 15:07 PST

The second tool was helpful for the realtime monitoring of a single
file, I'd thought about Sysinternals filemon but unfortunately I don't
believe it's network aware and the files i'm monitoring are on a
network drive.

The real program/application i'm after is something that can perform
actions on noticing file changes, and it should be able to keep track
of any amount of files (until it runs out of CPU power anyway ^_^)

---

Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 30 Oct 2006 20:58 PST

Can you say what actions you'd like the software to perform upon
detecting changes in the files?

sublime1-ga

---

Clarification of Question by kiwwa-ga on 30 Oct 2006 22:04 PST

I would really like 

- execution of a specified program
- the ability to kill tasks after a certain amount of time expended
- the ability to have multiple entries that the application is monitoring
- to be able to kick off a different executable and parameters for
that program based upon WHICH file changed ANDDDD;
- reliability!!!!!!

This is my wish-list for the program, LaunchPad is capable of SOME of
these (namely everything but reliability!)

Hi,
   I have a piece of code which helps you to select a particular
folder(which could be a drive as well), then it adds watchers to it n
its sub folders( the complete tree) and sends notification whenever a
new file created/deleted or anything is modified. It is a C# code and
can be optimized as per your requirement. Since it is your own code to
get notifications you have full control on the way you need to process
them, you can add more classes to it get process a particular file the
way you want. But my query is whether u are using Windows OS or any
other, as with windows OS if a file is just opened n no changes are
made the modified date does not change and u do not get any
notification for it as such. There will be more to be done with such
issues.

Regards,
Saurabh

There's an example of built-in software to ISS
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/8dcdcea4-d1f8-4e91-8cdd-25102317904a.mspx?mfr=true
That you might want to look into.

There's plenty of info available from
google windows file change notification

although it is not in the C++ / C# side of the house, you might take a
look at CruiseControl.  CC is an open source build server.

the good thing about using a build server for this task is that file
change sounds like it is the tip of the iceberg.  what is seems you
need is a linear workflow tool.  I.e. a simple way to define a
straight-line process, start it, monitor it, and then wait for the
next triggering event.

CC (and there are other similar tools) waits for a time- or
event-driven execution point, then runs an Ant task (or perhaps in
your case nAnt, the C# version).  Ant scripts are XML definitions of
(typically) straight-line workflows.

i have used CC successfully for exactly the type of application you
are describing: arbitrary network filesystem events triggering file
processing.

good luck!

^_^

test