Monitoring File system in c# like file created changed, deleted, renamed


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You can monitor the File system using the System.IO.FileSystemWatcher class. And you can handle the events like created, changed, deleted, and renamed.

Some important properties of FileSystemWatcher class:

Property Description
 
Path You can set the path which you want to monitor.
Filter You can filter the files.
You can specify which files you want to monitor.
If you want to monitor all files you can use assign by "*.*";
IncludeSubdirectories It takes Boolean value. You want to monitor only a specified path or you want to monitor all the subdirectories and files which is specified by path.
EnableRaisingEvents It takes Boolean value. It enables the raising events. By defaults it is false. You want to handle event on file system changes, you must set this property to true.

Let we see the code snippet:

using System.IO;

       private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            FileSystemWatcher fsw = new FileSystemWatcher();
            fsw.Path = "c:\\temp\\";
            fsw.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
            fsw.Filter = "*.*";
            fsw.IncludeSubdirectories = true;
            fsw.Created += new FileSystemEventHandler(file_handler_function);
            fsw.Changed += new FileSystemEventHandler(file_handler_function);
            fsw.Deleted += new FileSystemEventHandler(file_handler_function);
            fsw.Renamed += new RenamedEventHandler(file_rename_handler_function);
           
        }
        private void file_rename_handler_function(object sender, RenamedEventArgs e)
        {
         
            Console.WriteLine("File Name is changed from " + e.OldFullPath + " to  " + e.FullPath);
 
        }

        private void file_handler_function( object sender, FileSystemEventArgs e)
        {
            if (e.ChangeType == WatcherChangeTypes.Created)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("New file created : " + e.FullPath);
            }
            else if (e.ChangeType == WatcherChangeTypes.Deleted)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("File is deleted : " + e.FullPath);
            }
            else if (e.ChangeType == WatcherChangeTypes.Changed)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("File modified : " + e.FullPath);
            }
         }

 


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