fs-monitor-mqtt 0.3.1

A file system monitor that can publish file change events to MQTT broker.

fs-monitor-mqtt

Overview

The monitor script listens to filesystem events such as created, modified, deleted, moved, and publishes them to a MQTT broker.

The topic of the published message is the absolute path of the changed file that is being monitored. An example payload is a JSON object as follows:

{
    "timestamp": "2023-10-03T15:42:20.373182",
    "event_type": "modified",
    "is_directory": false,
    "src_path": "/tmp/1"
}

Dependencies

• watchdog: Cross-platform file system events monitoring.
• paho-mqtt: MQTT client library.
• typer: CLI application framework based on Python type hints.

More dependencies can be found in pyproject.toml.

PyPI Package

The package is available on PyPI.

Installation and Usage

pip install fs-monitor-mqtt
fs-monitor-mqtt --path /tmp --address localhost --port 1883

Log level

The default log level is INFO. To change the log level, set the environment variable LOG_LEVEL to one of the following values: DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, CRITICAL.

For example,

LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG fs-monitor-mqtt --path /tmp --address localhost --port 1883

Run with Docker

Prerequisites

• Docker

Instructions

1. Build the Docker image including the application and its dependencies.

   docker build -t fs-monitor-mqtt .
   

2. Start a MQTT broker.

   docker run -d -p 1883:1883 --name mosquitto eclipse-mosquitto mosquitto -c /mosquitto-no-auth.conf
   

3. Start a MQTT client that subscribes to all MQTT topics (so that messages can be received and verified easily).

   docker run --network=host eclipse-mosquitto mosquitto_sub -t '#' -h 'localhost' -p 1883
   

4. In a separate terminal, start fs-monitor-mqtt docker container in the background. The default configuration is to monitor the /tmp directory, publish to the MQTT broker running on the host machine with the default port of 1883.

   docker run -d --network=host --name fs-monitor-mqtt fs-monitor-mqtt --path /tmp --address localhost --port 1883
   

5. (optional) Follow the output of the fs-monitor-mqtt container.

   docker logs fs-monitor-mqtt -f
   

6. Make a change to the file system that is being monitored. For example, create a new file.

   docker exec fs-monitor-mqtt touch /tmp/1
   

7. Verify that the MQTT client receives the message. For example,

   {"timestamp": "2023-10-03T20:03:55.026184", "event_type": "created", "is_directory": false, "src_path": "/tmp/1"}
   {"timestamp": "2023-10-03T20:03:55.026759", "event_type": "modified", "is_directory": true, "src_path": "/tmp"}
   {"timestamp": "2023-10-03T20:03:55.026860", "event_type": "modified", "is_directory": false, "src_path": "/tmp/1"}
   {"timestamp": "2023-10-03T20:03:55.026920", "event_type": "modified", "is_directory": true, "src_path": "/tmp"}
   

8. Stop the fs-monitor-mqtt container.

   docker rm -f fs-monitor-mqtt
   

9. Stop the MQTT broker.

   docker rm -f mosquitto
   

Development

Prerequisites

• Python > 3.9

Instructions

Run default make command which does the following:

• install poetry
• install dependencies
• install pre-commit hooks
• run unit tests (Pytest)
• start the MQTT broker
• run integration tests (Robot)
• finally stopping the MQTT broker.

Check more commands in the Makefile.

Unit Tests

Run unit tests with make test. The unit tests are written using Pytest.

Integration Tests

Run integration tests with make integration_test. The integration tests are written using Robot Framework.

Future Work

• Health check mechanism.
• Performance tests.
• GitHub Actions for CI/CD.
• Add more unit tests.
• Add more integration tests, for example: MQTT connection failure.