Detect new file in a directory

[Roy Cantos]

Hi Guys,
Is there a way that java can detect a new file, or existing API that we can use.

Thanks,
Roy

[Dale DeMott]

If you want to know if the was created or not then use the exists() method off of the File class. If you are talking about the creation date, I'm not sure where to find that.
-Dale

[Matt Siegel]

I assume you mean that you want to check when a new file is put into a directory. I had to do something like this once. Here's what I did:
Using java.io.File.listFiles() I got an array of files in the directory. And then after a period of time, something like 5 secs which is configurable, I used some set operations to determine if any new files were put in the directory.
Unfortunately I do not have any of the code anymore, but here's something:

int period = 5 * 1000;
File dir = new File("xxxxxxx");
while (true) {
    Thread.sleep(period);
    File[] files = dir.listFiles();
    // Do set operations
     ...
     ... 
    //
    if (newFileInDirectory) {
        // Call method
    }
}

HTH,
Matt