Overview:

FileSystemWatcher reports changes that are made to a monitored directory by signaling a registered callback function and passing that function a list of changes that have occurred. Each element of the list represents a file and the action that was performed on that file.

Example:

ADDED: /Users/jared/Desktop/test.txt

The list is held in a vector of type sEventInfo, where sEventInfo is a struct defined as follows:

enum eEvent {
    ADDED = 0,
    MODIFIED,
    DELETED
};

struct sEventInfo {
    eEvent event;
    std::string absFilePath;
};

The eEvent enumerator specifies the action taken on the file and the string absFilePath is the absolute file path of the file.

Usage:

SimpleEventCatcher is a dummy class that serves as an example of how to register for signals from FileSystemWatcher. These are the basic steps:

// invoke file system watcher on specified path
FileSystemWatcher watcher("/Users/jared/Desktop");

// pass the instance of FileSystemWatcher to the class
// that will register for event notifications
SimpleEventCatcher dirEventCatcher(&watcher);

// register for directory event signal (callback function)
QObject::connect(watcher, SIGNAL(dirEventSignal(std::vector<sEventInfo>)), this,
                 SLOT(handleDirEvent(std::vector<sEventInfo>)));

// implement handleDirEvent
void SimpleEventCatcher::handleDirEvent(std::vector<sEventInfo>)
{
    /* implementation here */
}

Debug:

The debug flag can be set in filesystemwatcher.h. It is set to 1 by default and outputs the following information to the console:

[BOOTSTRAP]

[TIMER] Triggered Path: "/Users/jared/Desktop" "ADDED: /Users/jared/Desktop/test2.txt" "ADDED: /Users/jared/Desktop/test.txt"

[SIGNAL] From SimpleEventCatcher Slot: "ADDED: /Users/jared/Desktop/test2.txt" "ADDED: /Users/jared/Desktop/test.txt"

[\BOOTSTRAP]

[WATCHER] Triggered Path: "/Users/jared/Desktop" "DELETED: /Users/jared/Desktop/test2.txt"

[SIGNAL] From SimpleEventCatcher Slot: "DELETED: /Users/jared/Desktop/test2.txt"