Ignoring Files with WatchDog

Question

I am running the following code that implements WatchDog in Python to monitor file changes. I am trying to keep track of all the changes in a log file (DoNotDelete.txt), and therefore am trying to ignore this DoNotDelete.txt file within my code. However when I try to run this (first by passing an 'n' to the file and then by changing files) I get a ValueError (ValueError: conflicting patterns set(['*']) included and excluded).

import sys
import time
import os
import logging
from watchdog.observers import Observer
from watchdog.events import PatternMatchingEventHandler

class MyHandler(PatternMatchingEventHandler):

    currentEvent = ""
    update = False

    def on_modified(self, event):
        super(MyHandler, self).on_modified(event)
        what = 'Directory' if event.is_directory else 'File'
        self.currentEvent = what + ", modified, " + event.src_path
        if(self.update == False):
            file = open("DoNotDelete.txt", "a+")
            file.write(self.currentEvent + "\n")
            file.close()
        else:
            print self.currentEvent

    def on_created(self, event):
        super(MyHandler, self).on_created(event)
        what = 'Directory' if event.is_directory else 'File'
        self.currentEvent = what + ", created, " + event.src_path
        if(self.update == False):
            file = open("DoNotDelete.txt", "a+")
            file.write(self.currentEvent + "\n")
            file.close()
        else:
            print self.currentEvent

    def on_deleted(self, event):
        super(MyHandler, self).on_deleted(event)
        what = 'Directory' if event.is_directory else 'File'
        self.currentEvent = what + ", deleted, " + event.src_path
        if(self.update == False):
            file = open("DoNotDelete.txt", "a+")
            file.write(self.currentEvent + "\n")
            file.close()
        else:
            print self.currentEvent

    def on_moved(self, event):
        super(MyHandler, self).on_moved(event)
        what = 'Directory' if event.is_directory else 'File'
        self.currentEvent = what + ", moved, from: " + event.src_path + ", to: " + \ 
        event.dest_path
        if(self.update == False):
            file = open("DoNotDelete.txt", "a+")
            file.write(self.currentEvent + "\n")
            file.close()
        else:
            print self.currentEvent

    def get_boolean(self, bool):
        self.update = bool

if __name__ == "__main__":
    booleanUpdate = False
    updateOrNot = raw_input("Would you like to enable auto-update (y/n): ")
    if((len(updateOrNot) == 1) and (updateOrNot.lower() == "y")):
        booleanUpdate = True
    event_handler = MyHandler(ignore_patterns='*.txt')
    event_handler.get_boolean(booleanUpdate)
    observer = Observer()
    observer.schedule(event_handler, path='.', recursive=True)
    observer.start()
    print booleanUpdate
    try:
        while True:
            time.sleep(1)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        observer.stop()
    observer.join()

Any suggestions of how to get around this error?

Answer 1

I guess you should use a list for the patterns.

class MyHandler(PatternMatchingEventHandler):

  currentEvent = ""
  update = False

  def __init__(self):
      super(MyHandler, self).__init__(ignore_patterns=["*/DoNotDelete.txt"])

  def doExtractMethods(self):
      if (self.update == False):
          file_ = open("DoNotDelete.txt", "a+")
          file_.write(self.currentEvent + "\n")
          file_.close()
      else:
          print self.currentEvent

  def on_modified(self, event):
      super(MyHandler, self).on_modified(event)
      what = 'Directory' if event.is_directory else 'File'
      self.currentEvent = what + ", modified, " + event.src_path
      self.doExtractMethods()

  def on_created(self, event):
      super(MyHandler, self).on_created(event)
      what = 'Directory' if event.is_directory else 'File'
      self.currentEvent = what + ", created, " + event.src_path
      self.doExtractMethods()

  def on_deleted(self, event):
      super(MyHandler, self).on_deleted(event)
      what = 'Directory' if event.is_directory else 'File'
      self.currentEvent = what + ", deleted, " + event.src_path
      self.doExtractMethods()

  def on_moved(self, event):
      super(MyHandler, self).on_moved(event)
      what = 'Directory' if event.is_directory else 'File'
      self.currentEvent = what + ", moved, from: " + event.src_path + ", to: "\
                          + event.dest_path
      self.doExtractMethods()

  def get_boolean(self, bool):
      self.update = bool

Notice ignore_patterns=["*/DoNotDelete.txt"]

See Monitoring a single file and https://github.com/gorakhargosh/watchdog/issues/99