macOS File Change

[sivaprakash]

Hi

What are the options available in COCOA to handle file/directory changes actively. For example if there is a change in any given directory then there should be an alert sent to another program which is running.

Thanks
Siva

 

[jiminaus]

It's not at the Cocoa level, but checked out the File System Event API.

File System Events Programming Guide

Monitoring File Changes with the File System Events API

EDIT: Google also found UKKQueue at http://zathras.de/angelweb/sourcecode.htm. It is a Cocoa API build around the low-level kqueue/kevent API. But it's last update seems to have been in 2006, putting in tiger territory.

 

[gnasher729]

It's not at the Cocoa level, but checked out the File System Event API.

File System Events Programming Guide

Monitoring File Changes with the File System Events API

EDIT: Google also found UKKQueue at http://zathras.de/angelweb/sourcecode.htm. It is a Cocoa API build around the low-level kqueue/kevent API. But it's last update seems to have been in 2006, putting in tiger territory.

In my experience, FSEventStream is the easiest to use and most reliable.