Overview

Rattail File Monitor is a “service” (or “daemon”) which does “one thing” - it watches some folder(s) and when new files appear it takes action(s) on them. It runs “forever” unless stopped, regardless of whether anyone is currently logged onto the machine.

In many cases the “action” is just to copy (or move) the file elsewhere, for further processing. In some cases it may be to “copy” the file directly to a printer port, e.g. LPT1.

Sometimes the action will be to “import” and/or “process” data from the file, updating the Rattail DB or other systems.

However the action may be anything at all. Most common actions, e.g. copying a file to another location, are provided by way of Python functions or classes, in other words Python code. But you can also invoke an arbitrary command line for the action, which needn’t involve Python at all.