FileUpdater

A Python File System Listener

Problem:

I had two different directories. One was specific to all things published by my portfolio site and the other was specific to all things related to my resume. I wanted to keep these two directories distinct on my local drive; however, everytime I updated my resume, I also had to make sure I remembered to copy the latest one exported in PDF from a Word document to the public portfolio directory and properly rename it. This is a simply but unnecessarily tedious task. I figured all I needed to do is the have some event listener focus on a particular directory and copy the file over when a modification or file creation was detected.

Requirements:

• Python 3.5+

• Watchdog

• GitPython You can install Watchdog and GitPython by running the following command:

  $ pip install -r requirements.txt
  

How To Use:

This script was intended to be setup in the Windows Task Scheduler and executed at startup. To execute the script, navigate to the src directory and run the following command:

$ python FileUpdater.py -n <author_name> -e <author_email> -m <commit_message> -g <git_directory> -s <directory_to_watch> -d <destination_directories_01 destination_directories_02 ...> -p <pattern_matcher>

Example:

$ python FileUpdater.py -n "David Lam" -e "some_email@xyz.com" -m "updating cool file" -g \some\git\directory -s \some\directory\to\watch -d \directory\01 \directory\02 -p *.pdf *.xml *.json

Arguments:

Required:

• directory_to_watch: A String of the path of the directory the script will listen to.
• destination_directories: A list of space separated Strings (must include at least 1) of the path to which to move the updated file(s) to. This can include a new name of the file if needed. For example: if a file was originally called apple.pdf, you could specify the path /some_path/orange.pdf to be the new name of the copied file.
• pattern_matcher: A list of space separated regular expression Strings (must include at least 1).

Optional:

• git_directory: A String of the path to the git directory the files will be moved to.
• author_name: A String of the author and committer of the update. Required only if git_directory argument provided.
• author_email: A String of the author and committer's email. Required only if git_directory argument provided.
• commit_message: A String of the message associated with the Git commit. Required only if git_directory argument provided.