File Watcher and Folder Watcher - Watch a folder for new files, and trigger a custom action

Microsoft® Windows® 11, 10, 8, 7, Vista®, 2019/2016/2012/2008/2003, x32 and x64

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File and Folder Watcher continuously monitors one or more folders for new files. When new files arrive, File and Folder Watcher then triggers a custom action, such as running a second program with the new files. This can be used to:

Pre-process photos as you take them, using Adobe Droplets
Automatically process incoming FTP files as they arrive
Automatically send files via FTP, SFTP, FTPS after they are dropped in a folder
Automatically distil PDF files
Automatically Data mine incoming files with TextPipe Pro, also from DataMystic
Automatically Process email attachments when they are saved to disk
Automatically Load new files into a database
Quickly and easily trigger business processes when files are created
and much more! See screen shots

With File Watcher, files are only processed when they have finished being written to disk - so huge video files (100MB - 10GB or more) will not be processed prematurely.

Files that already exist when File Watcher starts can be processed- this is very handy to pickup files that might have arrived while FileWatcher was not active due to a system restart.

Incoming files can be processed individually, or grouped together.

File Watcher can process only those files that match a filespec (e.g. '*.txt;*.html') and ignore all other files that might arrive at the same time. It can also watch multiple folders at the same time (subfolders are handled with a checkbox).

File Watcher can also prevent triggering new actions while an old action is still running.

See the extensive help file for many more examples.

User Benefits

Monitor an unlimited number of folders, including subfolders
Run unlimited actions per folder watching event
Monitor folders on local disks, network drives, or FTP locations
Monitor changed, renamed, deleted and created events or any combination of these
Filter by file attributes, creation time, directory name, file name or type, size etc
Never lose a file or folder event regardless of the level of disk activity
Copy, move, email, print actions, and custom actions via VBScript/JScript integration
Fully recovers from network location downtime.

How to use File Watcher

Usage:
filewatcher.exe "/f=settings.fwx" [/g]

Where options is one or more of:
/f=.. Load a settings file
/g Begin watching immediately

Running File Watcher as a Service

Yes, you can run FileWatcher as a service and keep it running even after system restarts or possible server crashes

Sending an Email with File Watcher

To send an email from File Watcher, you need to use a command-line email program. We STRONGLY recommend you do NOT search for a free download of sendmail.exe - these are 99% guaranteed to contain a virus. Instead, please download from our partner Absolute Tools.

Running File Watcher on Reboot

To run File Watcher on reboot, just copy the FileWatcher shortcut to the Programs\Start Up folder, and customize the start-up parameters.

To run FileWatcher as a service and keep it running even after system restarts or possible server crashes, we recommend FireDaemon.

Monitoring a Network Location

If you are monitoring a network location, File Watcher can automatically reconnect if the connection drops out - see this log below:

20090422 15:26:50 Lost connection - The specified network name is no longer available
20090422 15:26:50 Attempting automatic restart in 60 seconds
20090422 15:26:55 Attempting restart...
20090422 15:27:16 Folder \\Bert\C does not exist
20090422 15:27:16 Attempting restart...
20090422 15:28:45 Folder \\Bert\C does not exist
...
20090422 15:28:50 Attempting restart...
20090422 15:29:15 Restart successful

Schedule a job if a file arrives

Using File Watcher, you can trigger a batch file that runs Windows 'at' command to schedule a job at a defined time if a file arrives. See example 'schedule.bat' when you install

Upload Files via FTP as they change

This is one of FileWatcher's key uses here at DataMystic. You can find all these files in this zip file

As we change web files, FileWatcher detects them, bundles them into a file list every 5 minutes and uploads them.

Settings:Folders to Watch Tab

Folder to watch: c:\bp\public_html\crystal - the root of our website
Watch subfolders: Yes
File types: *.* - we can also use TextPipe later to strip out file types we don't want like _vti_cnf files.
Second to wait: 300 ie 5 minutes, so we FTP a group of files every 5 minutes
Actions: New and Updated Files

Settings:Actions Tab

Command- C:\Program Files\DataMystic\FileWatcher\ftp_upload.bat - this is included in the FileWatcher distribution
Parameters - %file%
How to Run: Run the command with a list of files (after waiting for new files to arrive)
Disable if already running - Yes

We use TextPipe (Lite, Standard or Pro) to massage the filename into a form suitable for Windows' FTP client (prepare_ftp.fll).

The batch file ftp_upload.bat oversees the whole process:

ftp_upload.bat:

@echo off
"C:\Program files\DataMystic\TextPipe\textpipe.exe" /minimized "/f=C:\Program files\DataMystic\filewatcher\prepare_ftp.fll" "%1" /g /q
ftp -i -n "-s:%1"

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