Stares

Stares is a inter-process node.js module to manage multiple file watchers.

With stares, you could avoid duplicately watching a same file or directory because stares instances could share with each other even if they are in different processes.

Usage

var stares = require('stares');

stares({
    port: 9807

}).on('all', function(){
    console.log('something changes');

}).watch('package.json', function(err, info){
	console.log(info.watched); // ['/path/to/package.json'];
	console.log(info.watching); // There might be other paths.
});

stares(options)

Class: stares.Stares(options)

• options Object
  • port Number socket port to handle processes
  • permanent Boolean=false

.watch(files, callback)

• files Path|Array.<Path> the file(s) to be watched
• callback function(err, info)
  • err
  • info.pid Number The process id who accepts the task to watch the files.
  • info.watched Array.<Path> The files has been added to the watching list just now. Notice that stares won't duplicately watch a certain file, so it might be different between files and info.watched
  • info.watching Array.<Path> The current watching list.

Watch a list of files. If the current process is the master, the instance will watch these files, otherwise, stares will delegate these files to the master instance to do this job.

So, if you use .watch() method in a subordinate process, the instance will never actually watch any files, but the master instance do.

.unwatch(files, callback)

Remove files from the watching list.

The difference of the arguments from .watch() is that there's no info.watched but a info.unwatched to represent the files which has been removed just now.

Event: 'watch'

Emitted when there comes a watch request

Event: 'unwatch'

Emitted when there comes a unwatch request

Event: 'listening'

Emitted if it is a master process and just listened to a port

Event: 'connect'

Emitted if connected to a master process

Events of gaze

• all
• added
• changed
• deleted
• renamed
• error
• end