Java 7 WatchService - Ignoring multiple occurrences of the same event

Question

The javadoc for StandardWatchEventKinds.ENTRY_MODIFY says:

Directory entry modified. When a directory is registered for this event the

Answer 1

If you are trying the same in Scala using better-files-akka library, I have comeup with this work around based on the solution proposed in the accepted answer.

https://github.com/pathikrit/better-files/issues/313

trait ConfWatcher {

  implicit def actorSystem: ActorSystem

  private val confPath = "/home/codingkapoor/application.conf"
  private val appConfFile = File(confPath)
  private var appConfLastModified = appConfFile.lastModifiedTime

  val watcher: ActorRef = appConfFile.newWatcher(recursive = false)

  watcher ! on(EventType.ENTRY_MODIFY) { file =>
    if (appConfLastModified.compareTo(file.lastModifiedTime) < 0) {
      // TODO
      appConfLastModified = file.lastModifiedTime
    }
  }

}

Answer 2

I had a similar issue - I am using the WatchService API to keep directories in sync, but observed that in many cases, updates were being performed twice. I seem to have resolved the issue by checking the timestamp on the files - this seems to screen out the second copy operation. (At least in windows 7 - I can't be sure if it will work correctly in other operation systems)

Maybe you could use something similar? Store the timestamp from the file and reload only when the timestamp is updated?