Monitoring File System using FileSystemWatcher Class

• Download FileMonitor.zip-20.31KB

Introduction

The FileSystemWatcher class is used to watch for changes in a specified directory. You can watch for changes in files and subdirectories of the specified directory. Also you can create a component to watch files on a local computer, a network drive, or a remote computer.

The FileSystemWatcher is designed to watch for changes within the directory, not to changes to the directory's attributes themselves.

The Windows operating system notifies your component of file changes in a buffer created by the FileSystemWatcher. If there are many changes in a short time, the buffer can overflow. This causes the component to lose track of changes in the directory, and it will only provide blanket notification. To avoid a buffer overflow you can filter out unwanted change notifications.

Using the code

namespace FileMonitor { public interface EventsList { void OnRenamed(object source, RenamedEventArgs e); void OnChanged(object source, FileSystemEventArgs e); } public class MonitorEngine { private String path; private EventsList events = null; public MonitorEngine(String path,EventsList ev) { this.events=ev; this.path=path; } public void WatcherFiles() { FileSystemWatcher watcher = new FileSystemWatcher(); try { watcher.Path = path; watcher.IncludeSubdirectories=true; } catch(ArgumentException ex) { MessageBox.Show(ex.Message); return; } // setup what we are looking for watcher.NotifyFilter = NotifyFilters.LastAccess | NotifyFilters.LastWrite| NotifyFilters.FileName | NotifyFilters.DirectoryName; watcher.Filter = "*.*"; // Add event handlers. watcher.Changed += new FileSystemEventHandler(events.OnChanged); watcher.Created += new FileSystemEventHandler(events.OnChanged); watcher.Deleted += new FileSystemEventHandler(events.OnChanged); watcher.Renamed += new RenamedEventHandler(events.OnRenamed); // Begin watching the directory. watcher.EnableRaisingEvents = true; } } }

You can download the attached source code to understand how to use this class, to monitor certain partitions on HDD or a specific location.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Intelliproject Open License (IPOL)

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