Alright, buckle up, because I’m gonna walk you through my adventure with `waiting on hand and foot`! It was a wild ride, lemme tell ya.
So, it all started when I wanted to see how I could totally streamline a repetitive task. I was spending way too much time babysitting a process, and I thought, “There’s gotta be a better way!” I had this vision of a little robot butler, just waiting for me to give it a nod, and bam, the task is done. That’s the “waiting on hand and foot” part, ya know?
First, I identified the bottleneck. What exactly was I waiting for? Turns out, it was data. I had a script that needed fresh data before it could run, and I was manually checking for that data every hour, on the hour. Lame.
Then I brainstormed. What tools could I use to automate this waiting game? I considered cron jobs, but that felt clunky. I needed something more reactive, something that would immediately kick things off when the data arrived. That’s when I landed on the idea of using file system events.
So, I started coding. I used Python (because, duh) with the `watchdog` library. This thing is awesome. It lets you monitor a directory for changes. Here’s the basic flow:
- Watch a specific folder for new files.
- When a new file appears, check if it’s the data file I’m expecting.
- If it is, run the script!
The `watchdog` part was surprisingly easy. I installed it with `pip install watchdog`, and then wrote a simple script that looked something like this (simplified, of course):
python
import time
import os
import subprocess
from * import Observer
from * import FileSystemEventHandler
class MyHandler(FileSystemEventHandler):
def on_created(self, event):
if *_directory:
return
filepath = *_path
if *(“.dat”): # Checking for my data file extension
print(f”Hey, a new .dat file! It’s go time!”)
*([“python”, “my_*”]) # Run my main script
if __name__ == “__main__”:
path = “/path/to/my/data/folder”
event_handler = MyHandler()
observer = Observer()
*(event_handler, path, recursive=False)
try:
while True:
*(1)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
I then tested the script. I dropped a dummy `.dat` file into the watched folder, and boom, my `my_*` kicked off. It worked! (Mostly).
But there were some snags. For example, sometimes the data file would be partially written when the event triggered. This meant my script was trying to process an incomplete file. Bad news.
To fix this, I added a check to see if the file was still being written to. I used the file size as a proxy. If the file size hadn’t changed for a short period (like 5 seconds), I assumed it was done being written. This involved adding a `*()` and a size check loop within the `on_created` function.
Another problem was error handling. What if `my_*` failed? I didn’t want the whole thing to crash. So, I wrapped the `*()` call in a `try…except` block and logged any errors.
Finally, I deployed it. I set it up to run as a background process on my server. And now? I literally don’t have to lift a finger. The data arrives, my script runs, and I get an email notification when it’s done (another small script I added later). Pure bliss!
The Result? I’m no longer wasting time manually checking for data. It’s like having a little robot assistant, waiting patiently and jumping into action the moment I need it. `waiting on hand and foot` is now a reality, and it’s awesome.
Key Takeaways:
- File system event monitoring is surprisingly powerful.
- Don’t forget to handle edge cases like incomplete files.
- Error handling is crucial for automated processes.
That’s it! Hope this was helpful. Now go build your own robot butler!
