Simple inotify

Very thin inotify(7) wrapper for Linux.

• Pure Python, depends on ctypes in standard library, no other dependencies
• Simply group and expose the underlying syscall, Linux specific
• Only simple event parsing, no complex event model or worker thread
• No recursive watching support, the same as the underlying syscall
• Supports non-blocking mode and get the fd, to be polled in your event loop

Example

from simple_inotify import *

observer = Inotify()
wd = ovserver.add_watch("/tmp")
while True:
	events = observer.read()
	for ev in events:
		print(ev)

API reference

The import module name is simple_inotify

Please refer to inotify(7) for details

inotify_event

inotify_event = namedtuple("inotify_event", ("wd", "mask", "cookie", "len", "name"))

class Inotify

Inotify class thar wraps inotify functions.

init(self, flags = 0)

Initializer, calling inotify_init1(2) with flags and holds the returned fd. Available flags are IN_CLOEXEC and IN_NONBLOCK.

close(self)

Calling close(2) on the inotify fd.

fileno(self)

Gets the underlying inotify fd, could be used to poll(2) elsewhere.

add_watch(self, path, /, mask = IN_ALL_EVENTS)

Calling inotify_add_watch(2) to register a new watch item, returns the watch descriptor.

rm_watch(self, wd)

Calling inotify_rm_watch(2) with given wd to unregister a watch.

get(self, wd)

Gets the path used to register the watch wd, returns None if not known.

read(self)

Calling read(2) on the inotify fd and parse the results. Returns a list of inotify_event. If the IN_NONBLOCK flag is set, returns an empty list if there is no new data.

constants

• IN_ACCESS
• IN_MODIFY
• IN_ATTRIB
• IN_CLOSE_WRITE
• IN_CLOSE_NOWRITE
• IN_OPEN
• IN_MOVED_FROM
• IN_MOVED_TO
• IN_CREATE
• IN_DELETE
• IN_DELETE_SELF
• IN_MOVE_SELF
• IN_UNMOUNT
• IN_Q_OVERFLOW
• IN_IGNORED
• IN_CLOSE
• IN_MOVE
• IN_ONLYDIR
• IN_DONT_FOLLOW
• IN_EXCL_UNLINK
• IN_MASK_CREATE
• IN_MASK_ADD
• IN_ISDIR
• IN_ONESHOT
• IN_ALL_EVENTS
• IN_CLOEXEC
• IN_NONBLOCK

Reference

• inotify(7)