watchr

Watchr provides a normalised API the file watching APIs of different node versions, nested/recursive file and directory watching, and accurate detailed events for file/directory creations, updates, and deletions.

Usage

Complete API Documentation.

There are two concepts in watchr, they are:

Watcher - this wraps the native file system watching, makes it reliable, and supports deep watching
Stalker - this wraps the watcher, such that for any given path, there can be many stalkers, but only one watcher

The simplest usage is:

// Import the watching library
var watchr = require('watchr')

// Define our watching parameters
var path = process.cwd()
function listener(changeType, fullPath, currentStat, previousStat) {
    switch (changeType) {
        case 'update':
            console.log(
                'the file',
                fullPath,
                'was updated',
                currentStat,
                previousStat
            )
            break
        case 'create':
            console.log('the file', fullPath, 'was created', currentStat)
            break
        case 'delete':
            console.log('the file', fullPath, 'was deleted', previousStat)
            break
    }
}
function next(err) {
    if (err) return console.log('watch failed on', path, 'with error', err)
    console.log('watch successful on', path)
}

// Watch the path with the change listener and completion callback
var stalker = watchr.open(path, listener, next)

// Close the stalker of the watcher
stalker.close()

More advanced usage is:

// Create the stalker for the path
var stalker = watchr.create(path)

// Listen to the events for the stalker/watcher
stalker.on('change', listener)
stalker.on('log', console.log)
stalker.once('close', function (reason) {
    console.log('closed', path, 'because', reason)
    stalker.removeAllListeners() // as it is closed, no need for our change or log listeners any more
})

// Set the default configuration for the stalker/watcher
stalker.setConfig({
    stat: null,
    interval: 5007,
    persistent: true,
    catchupDelay: 2000,
    preferredMethods: ['watch', 'watchFile'],
    followLinks: true,
    ignorePaths: false,
    ignoreHiddenFiles: false,
    ignoreCommonPatterns: true,
    ignoreCustomPatterns: null,
})

// Start watching
stalker.watch(next)

// Stop watching
stalker.close()

Install

npm

Install: npm install --save watchr
Import: import * as pkg from ('watchr')
Require: const pkg = require('watchr')

Editions

This package is published with the following editions:

watchr aliases watchr/source/index.js
watchr/source/index.js is ESNext source code for Node.js 10 || 12 || 14 || 16 with Require for modules

TypeScript

This project provides its type information via inline JSDoc Comments. To make use of this in TypeScript, set your maxNodeModuleJsDepth compiler option to 5 or thereabouts. You can accomlish this via your tsconfig.json file like so:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "maxNodeModuleJsDepth": 5
  }
}

History

Discover the release history by heading on over to the HISTORY.md file.

Contribute

Discover how you can contribute by heading on over to the CONTRIBUTING.md file.

Backers

Maintainers

These amazing people are maintaining this project:

Benjamin Lupton — view contributions

Contributors

These amazing people have contributed code to this project:

Aaron O'Mullan — view contributions
Adam Sanderson — view contributions
Benjamin Lupton — view contributions
Casey Foster — view contributions
David Byrd
Fredrik Norén — view contributions
Josh Levine — view contributions
Robson Roberto Souza Peixoto — view contributions
Stuart Knightley — view contributions