Product Knowledge Base

Space shortcuts

Page tree

Directory Monitoring

JobScheduler can monitor file creation with a (standalone) job and with an order (and a job chain).In this article the directory monitoring using a standalone job is described.
For further information on how to use file watching with a job chain we recommend reading Directory Monitoring with File Orders.

This job can then start a job chain or job group.

An example configuration for monitoring a directory:

<job name = "scheduler_file_notification_1">
<script language="shell">
<![CDATA[
                set
                echo %SCHEDULER_JOB_NAME%
                echo %SCHEDULER_TASK_TRIGGER_FILES%
                rem del %SCHEDULER_TASK_TRIGGER_FILES%
            ]]>
</script>
<start_when_directory_changed directory = "c:/temp" regex = "^file[1|2]\.xml$"/>
</job>

This job will monitor the folder c:/temp on a Windows® operating system. The regular expression is used to define which file(s) JobScheduler has to watch. In this example the regular expression means that on a directory change (deleting, renaming, adding any file) the job will be startet when the files file1.xml and/or file2.xml is in content of the directory. 

The SCHEDULER_TASK_TRIGGER_FILES environment variable contains the names of all the files in the c:/temp folder that matches the regular expression at the time when the directory was changed- it does contain the name of the file that triggered the embedded script only in the case the file matches the regular expression. The file names are maintained in a semicolon separated list.

Note that this behaviour could be critical when two files (e.g. file1.xml and file2.xml) are created at the same time.

  • Two tasks will then be started for the job.
  • In the first task the environment variable SCHEDULER_TASK_TRIGGER_FILES will have the value c:/temp/file1.xml;c:/temp/file2.xml.
  • In the second task the environment variable SCHEDULER_TASK_TRIGGER_FILES will have a value that depends on what the first task has done with the files.
  • If, for example, the first task deletes the files in c:/temp then SCHEDULER_TASK_TRIGGER_FILES will be empty for the second task.

 

Set up as a standalone job in the JobScheduler Editor JOE the script will look like this:


The directory settings and regular expression settings are entered in the 'FileWatcher' tab in JOE as follows:

For further information on how to use file watching with a job chain we recommend reading Directory Monitoring with File Orders.

See also