deep-watch

Deep Watch

Exactly like fs.watch, but with sub-directory support. When an instance of DeepWatch is registered on a directory, it scans all of that directories sub-directories and applies watchers to them as well. It also keeps track of newly added or removed directories after the watching has begun.

Note: A recursive option for fs.watch is currently supported (for OS X only) in a beta version of node (v0.11.9). Supported platforms will use the recursive option, all other platorms will use this library's original implementation.

API

new DeepWatch(cwd, [options], callback)

Return a new DeepWatch instance.

cwd String - the root directory to start watching from

options Object - see below for options details

• exclude: Array - a list of directory names to ignore. Events on those directories, their sud-directories, or any files within are not reported. (default: [])
• ignoreDotDirectories: Boolean - whether to ignore directories beginning with a . (default: true)

callback Function - a callback to be invoked on each file systen event. The callback is invoked with the following arguments (event, filename) and the DeepWatch instance as its this context.

DeepWatch#start()

Start listening for file system events.

DeepWatch#stop()

Stop listening for events and remove any associated watchers.

Example

var DeepWatch = require('deep-watch')

var dw = new DeepWatch('.', function(event, filename) {
  if (filename == 'foo/bar/index.html') this.stop()
})

dw.start()

Known limitations

• If multiple, nested files or directories are added at the same time (or very quickly), no event will be triggered for the nested file. This can happen when doing something like mkdir -p new-directory/new-sub-directory. The reason is that the sub-directory is created before the callback for the creation of the parent directory is invoked.