ichbinjakes/project-ideas

Project Idea: File Watcher

Create a python package that can be configured to watch a single file, multiple files or all files nested within a directory. If a file is modified a user defined callback function is executed.

Example use cases for the package:

• Run a code formatter every time a file is saved.
• Backup a newly created file to a storage server
• Something else?

Implementation:

The following 3 functions should be exposed by the API/package

def watch_single(filename, callback, period):
    """
    :arg filename: name of the file to watch
    :arg callback: function to call when the file is modified
    :arg period: how often the file should be checked e.g. period=1 -> the file is checked every second
    """
    pass
    
def watch_multiple(files, callback, period):
    """
    :arg files: list of filenames to watch
    :arg callback: function to call for each file that is modified
    :arg period: how often the files should be checked e.g. period=1 -> the files are checked every second
    """
    pass
    
def watch_directory(dirname, callback, period):
    """
    :arg dirname: name of the directory to watch
    :args callback: function to call for each file that is modified
    :arg period:  how often the files in the directory should be checked e.g. period=1 -> the files are checked every second
    """
    pass

The callback function will have the following signature:

def some_callback(filename, event_type):
    """Example callback function"""
    
    id event_type == "CREATED":
        # do something
        pass
    elif event_type == "UPDATED":
        # do something
        pass
    elif event_type == "DELETED":
        # do someting
        pass
    else:
        raise Exception("Unknow event type")
            

The event types are:

• CREATED
• UPDATED
• DELETED

Other requirements:

• Pure python implementation (only use standard library).
• Should be able to run on MacOS, Windows and linux.
• Include a simple documentation file on how to use the package
• Publish the package on PYPI