tracking file renaming/deleting with FSEvents on Lion

Question

I'm trying to use FSEvents to detect when files were added/removed from a specific folder. For the moment, I implemented a simple wrapper around FSEvents, and it works fine : I get all the events.

BUT the problem I have now is that when I rename a file in the Finder, I catch 2 distinct events : the first one of type "renamed" with the old file name, and another one with "renamed" and the new filename. The event ids are different between both calls.

So, how am I supposed to know which "renamed" event contains the old name, and which event contains the old one ?? I tried looking in the documentation, but unfortunately, kFSEventStreamEventFlagItemRenamed is not documented ... it seems new in Lion.

PS: the only way I could think of was : on a renamed event, I check my UI to see if I have an item corresponding to the event path. If so, I flag it for renaming. If not, I check if an item was flagged for renaming, and if so, then I rename it to the new event path. But I really don't like this idea ...

Edit: Ok, I imlemented something along the line of my "PS" : I noticed that when renaming something, the ids of the 2 events are consecutives, so that with the id of the event containing the new name, I can get the event containing the old name. I simply use a little dictionnary in my interface to store ids and associated paths in the case of a "renamed" event.

Anyway, I can now catch rename events, and even move events : when you move a file, it's a "renamed" event which is caught by the FSEventStream ...

But, I still have one last problem : deleting. When I delete something, it's moved to the recycle bin : I receive a "renamed" event. But the problem is that I don't receive the second rename event. Only a "modified" event on the .DS_Store file. I think this file is used by the Finder to know which files are in the bin, etc. So I could check modification to this file, and get the last "renamed" event to detect that a file was sent to the bin. But I'm using TotalFinder which uses Asepsis, which modifies the way the Finder stores .DS_Store files : I no longer receive "modified" on this. To sumarize : I can't detect when a file is sent to the bin ...

Any idea how I can do that ? Maybe use something else than FSEvents to catch only this event ?

Answer 1

Well, I didn't find the perfect answer to my question, but I found a solution which I eventually was really satisfied with, so I thought I might share ^^

As I said, when moving stuff to the trash, if you're only watching 1 folder, you won't catch the event generated when the image is put in the trash. So, I decided to do the following : I have a class which creates a stream on the root folder ("/") so that it will catch all the events -> this solves the problem of files being sent to the trash, and all such stuff. Then, this class allow to register delegates on certain pathes. So, instead of creating many streams, I create one big stream, then filter events as needed, and I create many delegates.

So all I have to do now when I want to watch events on a special folder is the following :

[[FSEventsListener instance] addListener:self forPath:somePath];

I just have to create an instance of FSEventListener at application start, and release it when the app stops. And I just need to implement the following 3 methods which will be automatically called :

-(void)fileWasAdded:(NSString *)file;
-(void)fileWasRemoved:(NSString *)file;
-(void)fileWasRenamed:(NSString *)oldFile to:(NSString *)newFile;

If you're interested in the source code of this little utility, you can check here : http://blog.pcitron.fr/tools/macosx-imageviewer/ (the utility was added at the version 0.8)

I developed it as part of a a little image viewer to keep the UI synchronized with the disk content (it displays the number of images contained in each directories, etc.) The source code is available, and the utility is in Utils/FSEventsListener.h/.m.

And if by any chance someone actually downloads the application and take a look at the sources, if you find anything usefull (performance / feature improvement, whatever) feel free to drop a comment / mail ^^

Answer 2

You are actually raising two issues related to FSEvents and renames. 1. A file is renamed and both the old and new file names are within the directory trees being monitored. 2. A file is renamed and one of the names is not in the directory trees being monitored.

You have solved (almost) the first issue. It is also necessary to provide your application with a means of knowing which events are being reported in the same FSEvent group of events. Your method of knowing that two renames are reported consecutively only works if they are within the same group of events being reported within the same latency period. If two rename events of type 2 occur one after another but are not within the same group of events being reported in the same latency group, they actually have nothing to do with each other - and you will mistakenly think one file has be renamed to another.

It is possible to handle the second type of rename by simply monitoring every directory in the system using the root, but this will flood you with many unnecessary events. You can determine if a "partial" rename is the result of a file being moved out of the directory tree being monitored or into the directory tree being monitored by doing a stat() on the file. If stat() fails with an errno of 2, then the file has been moved outside the directory being monitored, and it can be treated as if it has been deleted. If stat() succeeds, the event can be treated as if the file has been created.