Help with FileSystemWatcher in .NET

[Eric1977]

Since I haven't been too familiar with .NET in any language, I'd figure I'd start out with something simple like the FileSystemWatcher. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with the this constructor. How do I make .NET trigger when a file has changed?

I went by the example on the MSDN site for this, but I've hit a snag. Can anyone help? I've included the VI below.

[GerdW · Accepted solution]

Hi Eric,

why don't you study the ready-to-use example in the LabVIEW community?

[PhillipBrooks]

I wrote a version of soemthing like this once.

The thing to keep in mind is that different applications read and write to files in different ways.

I found Notepad generated multiple events for a single save. Not very friendly 😞

Another FileSystemWatcher example can be found here:

http://blog.jki.net/labs/dont-throw-away-your-throw-away-code/

[Eric1977]

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@GerdW wrote:

Hi Eric,

why don't you study the ready-to-use example in the LabVIEW community?

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I didn't see that on my Google search. Probably just skimmed right over it. Thanks.

[rolfk]

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@Eric1977 wrote:

Since I haven't been too familiar with .NET in any language, I'd figure I'd start out with something simple like the FileSystemWatcher. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with the this constructor. How do I make .NET trigger when a file has changed?

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Callbacks are never simple! 😁 LabVIEW tries to hide away some of the complications but only manages in a limited way to do that. It's definitely not straightforward programming and in a way goes completely against LabVIEW dataflow programming, which is why they chose to implement it as an event in .Net. Unfortunately .Net events don't map easily to LabVIEW events.

Whenever I had to deal with events in .Net or Java code in the past I always had to pinch myself a few times to get my mind wrapped around the correct syntax and not make a total mess of the implementation.