Question

There is a folder in which xml files are beeing copied at no particular time, when an event is happening. I want a php way to inspect the folder’s status and when an xml file arrives, an event will be triggered.(ex.call to the xml parser). So which is the best way (in php) to monitor a folder and trigger events according to it’s status? Thanx!

Answer 1

Haven’t tried it, but maybe Inotify can help you:

inotify is a Linux kernel subsystem that acts to extend filesystems to notice changes to the filesystem, and report those changes to applications.

There’s a PHP extension for inotify, see Inotify^Docs and inotify^PECL.

Another alternative if you’re running on linux is to use a PHP-independent daemon to monitor a directory for changes. You can use dnotify for it (obsoleted by inotify), something like:

dnotify -a -r -b -s /path/ -e <command>;

It will execute the command each time one of the files in other folder are modified (-a -r -b -s = any access/recursive directory lookup/run in background/no output).

Related:

• Read file change in php (linux equivalent of tail -f )
• How to efficiently monitor a directory for changes on linux?