A Python File System Listener

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.

• Python 3.5+

• Watchdog

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

  $ pip install -r requirements.txt
  

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 "[email protected]" -m "updating cool file" -g \some\git\directory -s \some\directory\to\watch -d \directory\01 \directory\02 -p *.pdf *.xml *.json

• 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).

• 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.