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Monday, March 11, 2013

Java 6 File Monitoring Example

I was asked today how you would monitor a file for changes using Java 6. Since Java 7 has added some great File handling features that I use, it was a reminder that not everyone is so lucky to use Java 7. I remembered an example from Geosoft (I remembered it because I liked the name). I went looking and I found their example code FileMonitor.java. It is a simple and elegant solution to monitoring files and directories for changes.

This is by no means a complete example, but does show a simple technique.

2 comments:

  1. m1k012 March, 2013 15:25

    JDK 7 has problem with some filesystems like CIFS/SMB

    Simple way is to use pooling implementation from OpenJDK

    http://adnotacja.blogspot.com/2012/12/powiadamiacz-zgodny-z-jdk-7-ale-na.html

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  2. John Yeary12 March, 2013 17:49

    Thanks for the additional information.

    The target audience for this post though was the JDK 6 user who can not upgrade for any number of reasons. This technique will work on JDK 7, but there are better options available.

    I have found some filesystem issues too with implementations. You mentioned CIFS/SMB, but I have found an incomplete implementation on my mac too.

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