navelgazer

A platform layer for gaze. Watch files consistently across Windows, OSX and Linux.

About

navelgazer is a super fast, light weight and simple file watcher. It will only ever emit change, delete and rename events. This library is ideal if you're looking for a stable platform to build your own file watcher.

If you're looking for a more full featured file watching library, please use gaze instead.

Usage

var watch = require('navelgazer');

watch(filepath, function(err, action, filepath) {
  // Called when file is changed
}, function(err, watcher) {
  // Watcher is ready
});

API

navelgazer(filepath, onEventCallback, watcherIsReadyCallback)

Specify a filepath and watcherIsReadyCallback(err, watcher) will be called when the watcher is ready for events. watcherIsReadyCallback(err, event, filepath, newFilePath) will be called for each event detected on that file.

Events emitted are either change, delete, or rename.

navelgazer.mode

• auto will default to native events and fallback to stat polling if EMFILE is hit.
• watch will only use native events and just throw EMFILE errors if the limit is hit.
• poll will only use stat polling.

navelgazer.closeAll()

Closes all native and stat polled watchers.

navelgazer.close(filepath, whenClosedCallback)

Closes a single file watcher by the given filepath and calls whenClosedCallback() when it is closed.

navelgazer.getWatchedPaths()

Returns the file paths of every file watch by either native or stat polling.

navelgazer.tick

Tick incrementer for stat poll. If stat polling, please supply an interval at which to check the files. For example:

setInterval(navelgazer.tick.bind(navelgazer), 500);

An interval of >=500ms is recommended as stat polling is taxing on the file system.

Building

Please see the Building page in the wiki.

Release History

• 1.1.1 - Add missing build.js script to package.json
• 1.1.0 - Updates for node v0.11 and io.js 1.0. Add pre-built binaries and many other minor fixes.
• 1.0.0 - Initial release

License

Copyright (c) 2015 Kyle Robinson Young
Licensed under the MIT license.

Thank you Bryce for the naming this library.