Best way to poll for existence of a file?

[Boaz Bezborodko]

GCC Consulting wrote:
>   
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: filepro-list-bounces+gccconsulting=comcast.net at lists.celestial.com
>>
>>     
> [mailto:filepro-list-bounces+gccconsulting=comcast.net at lists.celestial.com]
> On
>   
>> Behalf Of Boaz Bezborodko
>> Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 5:07 PM
>> To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
>> Subject: Best way to poll for existence of a file?
>>
>> I am updating a shipping system to integrate with UPS's Worldship.  I
>> was going to use their "Hands-Off" shipping method that polls for the
>> existence of a data file in a specific directory and imports the data if
>> something exists.  It can then generate a file with shipping data like
>> tracking number and freight charges to a specific file.  I want to poll
>> for that file with FPro and import the data when it exists.   I am using
>> Windows FP 5.6 off a Samba server.
>>
>> I was thinking of just setting up one rclerk or rreport operation to
>> just sit there and check for the existence of the file every couple of
>> seconds or minutes (using SLEEP) and import the data when something
>> exists.  It just seems a little cludgy to me.  Does anyone know of any
>> more elegant solution to doing this?
>>
>>
>> BTW, best of luck to all of those attending the meeting.
>>
>> Boaz
>>     
>
> Short of using ODBC, What I have done in the past is have as part of the end
> of day operation of Worldship, output a csv file with the information I
> needed.  Since you are running in *nix (my app is Windows), you would start
> a cron job to read in this file and processes the information any way you
> need to.  Once the data has been processed, my program moves this file to an
> archive directory.
>
>
> Richard Kreiss
> GCC Consulting
> rkreiss at gccconsulting.net
>  
>   
The thing is that even though the file-server is running on Linux I am 
running FP as a Windows operation so CRON won't work as I can't execute 
the task as a Linux process.  I guess my only choice is to have a 
FilePro task running in the background constantly checking for a file.

Boaz
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