node-inotifywait

Yet another nodejs fs.watch implementation that can watch:

• folders recursively
• big number of directories and files
• with low CPU use

This implementation is a wrapper above the inotifywait system command.

Why

Because other implementations:

• fs.watch
• node-watch
• chokidar
• watch

Are not performant for huge number of directories and files watching. Some are not recursive, other have high CPU usage when watching lot of directories and files.

Installation

npm install inotifywait

Prerequisit is to have the inotifywait command in the current PATH. On debian/ubuntu, you have to sudo apt-get install inotify-tools

Events

• add (p1 = filename, stats): received when a file or directory is added

• change (p1 = filename, stats): received when a file is modified

• unlink (p1 = filename, stats): received when a file or directory is deleted

• unknown (p1 = filename, p2 = full raw event object, stats): received when unknown action is done on a file or directory

• ready (p1 = unix process object): received when inotifywait is ready to watch files or directories

• close (no parameter): received when inotifywait exited

• error (p1 = error object): received when an error occures

stats has two properties, isDir a Boolean to specify if the event was on a file or a directory and date a Date object that holds the date of the occured event.

Example

var INotifyWait = require('inotifywait');

var watch1 = new INotifyWait('/tmp/', { recursive: false });
watch1.on('ready', function (filename) {
  console.log('watcher is watching');
});
watch1.on('add', function (filename) {
  console.log(filename + ' added');
  watch1.close(); // stop watching
});

var watch2 = new INotifyWait('/var/log/', { recursive: true });
watch2.on('change', function (filename) {
  console.log(filename + ' changed');
  watch2.close(); // stop watching
});

var watch3 = new Inotifywait("/my/dir", {
            recursive: true, // recurse sub folders
            excludes: ["\./\.git(.*)"], // exclusion regex patterns
            files: [".gitignore"], // explicit file paths to ignore
            events: ["create", "move", "delete"], // events to listen to
            spawnArgs: {stdio: "inherit"}, // spawn args controlling bin spawning
            bin: "/home/me/bin/inotifywait" // bin path
        });
watch3.on('change', function (filename) {
  console.log(filename + ' changed');
  watch3.close(); // stop watching
});

Contributors

• Stéphane Gully
• Friedel Ziegelmayer
• Stéphane Erard