NAME AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify - An AnyEvent compatible module to monitor files/directories for changes VERSION version 0.19 SYNOPSIS use AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify; my $notifier = AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify->new( dirs => [ qw( this_dir that_dir ) ], interval => 2.0, # Optional depending on underlying watcher filter => sub { shift !~ /\.(swp|tmp)$/ }, cb => sub { my (@events) = @_; # ... process @events ... }, ); # enter an event loop, see AnyEvent documentation Event::loop(); DESCRIPTION This module provides a cross platform interface to monitor files and directories within an AnyEvent event loop. The heavy lifting is done by Linux::INotify2 or Mac::FSEvents on their respective O/S. A fallback which scans the directories at regular intervals is include for other systems. See "IMPLEMENTATIONS" for more on the backends. Events are passed to the callback (specified as a CodeRef to "cb" in the constructor) in the form of AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify::Events. METHODS new() A constructor for a new AnyEvent watcher that will monitor the files in the given directories and execute a callback when a modification is detected. No action is take until a event loop is entered. Arguments for new are: dirs dirs => [ '/var/log', '/etc' ], An ArrayRef of directories to watch. Required. interval interval => 1.5, # seconds Specifies the time in fractional seconds between file system checks for the AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify::Role::Fallback implementation. Specifies the latency for Mac::FSEvents for the "AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify::Role::Mac" implementation. Ignored for the "AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify::Role::Linux" implementation. filter filter => qr/\.(ya?ml|co?nf|jso?n)$/, filter => sub { shift !~ /\.(swp|tmp)$/, A CodeRef or Regexp which is used to filter wanted/unwanted events. If this is a Regexp, we attempt to match the absolute path name and filter out any that do not match. If a CodeRef, the absolute path name is passed as the only argument and the event is fired only if there sub returns a true value. cb cb => sub { my @events = @_; ... }, A CodeRef that is called when a modification to the monitored directory(ies) is detected. The callback is passed a list of AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify::Events. Required. backend backend => 'Fallback', backend => 'FreeBSD', backend => '+My::Filesys::Notify::Role::Backend', Force the use of the specified backend. The backend is assumed to have the "AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify::Role" prefix, but you can force a fully qualified name by prefixing it with a plus. Optional. no_external no_external => 1, This is retained for backward compatibility. Using "backend =" 'Fallback'> is preferred. Force the use of the "Fallback" watcher implementation. This is not encouraged as the "Fallback" implement is very inefficient, but it does not require either Linux::INotify2 nor Mac::FSEvents. Optional. WATCHER IMPLEMENTATIONS Linux Uses Linux::INotify2 to monitor directories. Sets up an "AnyEvent->io" watcher to monitor the "$inotify->fileno" filehandle. Mac Uses Mac::FSEvents to monitor directories. Sets up an "AnyEvent->io" watcher to monitor the "$fsevent->watch" filehandle. Fallback A simple scan of the watched directories at regular intervals. Sets up an "AnyEvent->timer" watcher which is executed every "interval" seconds (or fractions thereof). "interval" can be specified in the constructor to AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify and defaults to 2.0 seconds. This is a very inefficient implementation. Use one of the others if possible. Why Another Module For File System Notifications At the time of writing there were several very nice modules that accomplish the task of watching files or directories and providing notifications about changes. Two of which offer a unified interface that work on any system: Filesys::Notify::Simple and File::ChangeNotify. AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify exists because I need a way to simply tie the functionality those modules provide into an event framework. Neither of the existing modules seem to work with well with an event loop. Filesys::Notify::Simple does not supply a non-blocking interface and File::ChangeNotify requires you to poll an method for new events. You could fork off a process to run Filesys::Notify::Simple and use an event handler to watch for notices from that child, or setup a timer to check File::ChangeNotify at regular intervals, but both of those approaches seem inefficient or overly complex. Particularly, since the underlying watcher implementations (Mac::FSEvents and Linux::INotify2) provide a filehandle that you can use and IO event to watch. This is not slight against the authors of those modules. Both are well respected, are certainly finer coders than I am, and built modules which are perfect for many situations. If one of their modules will work for you by all means use it, but if you are already using an event loop, this module may fit the bill. SEE ALSO Modules used to implement this module AnyEvent, Mac::FSEvents, Linux::INotify2, Moose. Alternatives to this module Filesys::Notify::Simple, File::ChangeNotify. BUGS Please report any bugs or suggestions at Forcing the "IO::KQueue" backend on a Mac does not seem to work. The "IO::KQueue" backend seems to be working fine on FreeBSD. I don't have the experience or time to fix it on a Mac. I would greatly appreciate any help troubleshooting this. CONTRIBUTORS Thanks to Gasol Wu who contributed the FreeBSD support for IO::KQueue. AUTHOR Mark Grimes, COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE This software is copyright (c) 2013 by Mark Grimes, . This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.