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Author Topic: NANY 2011 Pledge: Reliable File Watcher Batcher Robot  (Read 17483 times)

mouser

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NANY 2011 Pledge: Reliable File Watcher Batcher Robot
« on: October 27, 2010, 02:57 PM »
This utility is similar to my inexplicably unpopular utility, Drag and Drop Robot, but is much more powerful and robust.

In essence, the utility is designed to run in the background; watching for newly created files, or let you drag+drop, or queue via commandline, and then run mini scripts on these files that can launch external processes on them asynchronously.

This isn't something that most people need, but it can be useful for doing large numbers of time-consuming operations like emailing files, uploading them, converting them, etc.



A *major* feature of the utility, and what makes it different from most other similar utilities (including my Drag and Drop Robot), is that it is designed from the ground up to be able to handle errors in processing files gracefully and let you re-attempt failed actions.

That is, imagine you have queued up 1000 files, and the utility is walking trough the file list, emailing image files, etc.  If some attempts to email fail, they will be logged in a Failed Action queue, where you can examine them and re-queue the actions to be re-attempted when you wish.  If the computer crashes in the middle, the next time you start it up it will continue right where it left off.



I basically have this program finished and working -- but it was created as paid contract work -- i am *hoping* to convince the funder to let me make a version of it available for free personal use.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2010, 04:15 PM by mouser »

justice

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Re: NANY 2011 Pledge: Reliable File Watcher Batcher Robot
« Reply #1 on: October 27, 2010, 07:59 PM »
Wow this sounds great, looking forward to screenies!

rjbull

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Re: NANY 2011 Pledge: Reliable File Watcher Batcher Robot
« Reply #2 on: October 28, 2010, 03:34 PM »
mouser, it's an old DOS program, but for comparison, are you aware of John Souvestre's SLEEP?  It was primarily designed (I think) as a semaphore handler in DOS BBSs:

Mention on Rob van der Woude's Batch File Utilities page (with SAC download link).

More details here, How can you delay execution of bat


SLEEP- Batch util sleeps until event occurrence.


A very flexible command line tool for scheduling events; intended for batch files. "The possible events are: FOR a length of time, TILL a certain time, a question ASKed of the user, certain FILESPECS appear or disappear, the UPS is active, or a SCHEDuled event. Commands can be combined. Sleep is DOS, DesqView (uses DV System Memory), OS/2, and Windows aware.
Sleep will accept an indirect command file. Multiple lines can be used and command files can be nested. The resulting command line must be under 16K.
Sleep takes up to 100 filespecs, with paths and wildcards. Sleep will exit when any of these filespecs is created (+) or deleted (-). If also prefixed by "&", the conditions for those filespecs are AND'ed rather than OR'ed.
Serial and parallel port monitoring: Sleep outputs a byte to the port's control register, then monitors the port's status register, looking for the presence (+) or absence (-) of a bit or bits.
Scheduled events can stored in a file which contains one line per event. Sleep returns the error level of an event when it occurs.
Sleep can also be called to return an error level based on the date or time.
The cursor keys can be used to modify time remaining."

mouser

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Re: NANY 2011 Pledge: Reliable File Watcher Batcher Robot
« Reply #3 on: October 28, 2010, 04:14 PM »
That sounds quite useful, but sounds like a completely orthogonal program (ie does different things for different purposes).


ljbirns

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Re: NANY 2011 Pledge: Reliable File Watcher Batcher Robot
« Reply #4 on: November 02, 2010, 03:00 PM »
orthogonal program
I thought that meant my Orthodondist  had to be present to use the program.
Lew

mouser

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Re: NANY 2011 Pledge: Reliable File Watcher Batcher Robot
« Reply #5 on: January 01, 2011, 10:50 AM »
I couldn't get permission *yet* to release this as a public NANY  :(
Still hope to release a free for home use version soon since the code is already written.

Apathetic_Coding

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Re: NANY 2011 Pledge: Reliable File Watcher Batcher Robot
« Reply #6 on: January 07, 2011, 09:43 PM »
Lemme talk to him... I'll convince him  >:D
Excited to see this tool!