Monitor the file system with FileSystemWatcher in C# .NET Part 2: updates

In this post we saw how to set up a FileSystemWatcher to monitor a directory for file insertions and creations.

The FileSystemWatcher object also lets you monitor a given directory for file updates. The following code is very similar to the one referred to in the above link. The difference is that we subscribe to the Renamed event:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
	RunUpdateExample();
	Console.ReadKey();
}

private static void RunUpdateExample()
{
	FileSystemWatcher watcher = new FileSystemWatcher();
	watcher.Path = @"c:\mydirectory";
	watcher.Renamed += watcher_Renamed;
	watcher.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
}

static void watcher_Renamed(object sender, RenamedEventArgs e)
{
	Console.WriteLine("File updated. Old name: {0}, new name: {1}", e.OldName, e.Name);
}

Again, we have the Console.ReadKey(); in Main to make sure that the console app doesn’t just quit, otherwise the file system watcher process dies.

If you run this code and rename a file in the monitored directory you may see an output similar to the following:

Read the next installment here.

Read all posts dedicated to file I/O here.