How to check for new files in a folder in python

Question

I am trying to create a script that will be executed every 10 minutes. Each time I have to check if there are new files in specific folder in my computer and if yes, there are some functions that would run on this file in order to get some values. These values will be written to excel file. The problem is that every time this function will be executed, the variables that contain the path to all the files will be generated again, and the program will go over all the files. How can I handle this problem? Thanks

Answer 1

Start by initializing variables:

savedSet=set()
mypath=… #YOUR PATH HERE

At the end of each cycle, save a set of file names, creation times and sizes in tuple format to another variable. When retrieving files, do the following:

-Retrieve a set of file paths

nameSet=set()
for file in os.listdir(path):
    fullpath=os.path.join(mypath, file)
    if os.path.isfile(fullpath):
        nameSet.add(file)

-Create tuples

retrievedSet=set()
for name in nameSet:
    stat=os.stat(os.path.join(mypath, name))
    time=ST_CTIME
    #size=stat.ST_SIZE If you add this, you will be able to detect file size changes as well.
    #Also consider using ST_MTIME to detect last time modified
    retrievedSet.add((name,time))

-Compare set with saved set to find new files

newSet=retrievedSet-savedSet

-Compare set with saved set to find removed files

deletedSet=savedSet-retrievedSet

-Run your functions on files with names from newSet -Update saved set

savedSet=newSet