WatchDirectory v4.8.9 beta 1

A first (and likely last) beta for WatchDirectory version 4.8.9 is available.

To see what has changed and download the beta, visit this forum post: WatchDirectory v4.8.9 beta 1.

Windows 10 - Yes, our programs will run on it

Microsoft again seems to do an excellent job on compatibility. Our programs run fine on the Technical Preview for the upcoming Windows 10.

WatchFTP version 3.7.3 released

We just released a new version of our FTP Monitoring program WatchFTP. This is a free upgrade for all customers.

What's new

This version fixes an issue where the Email Action did not always close the connection to your SMTP server. Most SMTP servers will automatically close/reuse such connections but if you have a busy FTP server (a lot of emails are sent) your SMTP server could run out of connection handles.

Download / Install

You can Download the new version here. Stop all your tasks and the WatchFTP Control Center and install the new version "On Top" of your current install. There is no need to uninstall your current version first.

WatchDirectory version 4.8.8 released

We just released WatchDirectory v4.8.8, this new release has the following issues solved:

• The ZIP files task could not properly create ZIP files containing large (> 4 GB) files.
• The FTP files task sometimes ignored the text/binary setting after a reconnect to the FTP server.

Upgrade

This is a free upgrade for all customers, download the new release here. Stop all your tasks and install this new release "on top" of your current version so it will keep all your tasks and settings.

WatchFTP version 3.7.2 released

We just released a new WatchFTP version, the download is available on our download page. This is a free update for all customers, just install it "on top" of your current version.

New in this release

This release fixes an issue where (some) FTP servers do not send a "succes" reply after a very large download. Previous WatchFTP releases interpreted this as a download faillure and downloaded the file again. This new release first checks if the file has been downloaded properly.

WatchFTP v3.7.1 released

We just released version 3.7.1 of our WatchFTP program.

This release fixes an issue where a WatchFTP task could crash if you use Filter Directories.

Free Upgrade

This is a free upgrade for all customers. Download the latest evaluation version and install it "on top" of your current install (no need to uninstall first).

WatchFTP v3.7 released

We just released version 3.7 of our WatchFTP program.

This release will automatically repair its databases if they somehow become corrupt. Database corruption could occur if the task is suddenly stopped (at "just the right/wrong moment") by the operating system, for example by a forced reboot after installing updates.

Free Upgrade

This is a free upgrade for all customers. Download the latest evaluation version and install it "on top" of your current install (no need to uninstall first).

Rename xml files using the value of an xml-node

Q&A

A customer wants to monitor a directory for new XML files and move/rename those files to a different directory. The files should be renamed to the value of an xml-node inside the xml file.

For example, the file 123.xml, which has the following contents

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<data-set xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
 <Title>
  <PRMap>I_32c_T_A</PRMap>
  <IMP>HH</IMP>
  <Pszx>683</Pszx>
  <Pszy>560</Pszy>
  <PGszx>27.305</PGszx>
......

should be renamed to the value of the <PRMap> node, the 123.xml file will be renamed to I_32c_T_A.xml.

Solution

WatchDirectory does not directly support reading xml values, but we wrote a little helper program (GetFromXML.exe) to make this possible. The idea is to use the "Copy Files" task with the Dynamic Naming option.

One of the dynamic name tags allows you to call a batch script to determine (part of) the final name to use. This batch script can then read the xml file (using GetFromXML.exe) to extract the correct name to use.
Download GetFromXML here.

This is the batch script (GetFromXML.bat):

SET GET=C:\Bin\GetFromXml.exe
  
"%GET%" "%WD_FILE%" Title^|PRMap^|* > "%WD_FILTERRESULT%"
if %errorlevel% neq 0 (
  DEL "%WD_FILTERRESULT%"
  echo Error xml lookup in file fails > "%WD_FILTERRESULT%"
)

The script should be saved as C:\Program Files (x86)\WatchDirectory\Resolvers\GetFromXML.bat and now the customer can use the following "Dynamic Name" as the target for this copy files task:

C:\Target\{code{GetFromXml.bat,}}.xml

WatchDirectory v4.8.7 released

Today we released an update for our Directory and File Monitoring program WatchDirectory. This update has the following fixes and improvements:

• Improved: When WatchDirectory detects an illegal file or foldername (for example a Macintosh filename), WatchDirectory will use the so-called 8.3 (short) name instead of aborting.
• Fixed: The new email implementation did not properly create HTML emails (embedding images did not work).
• Improved: The upload task will not automatically try to "Resume" uploads, it is now an option you can set.

Download/Install

Download the new version here. Install it "on top" of your current version so WatchDirectory will see your settings and tasks. There is no need to uninstall your current version first.

WatchFTP v3.6.6 released

We just released version 3.6.6 of our FTP File Monitoring program WatchFTP. This is a small update with a few fixes for the Email Action. Depending on how you configured this action, some variables were not properly set.

Download/Install

You can download the new version here. Just install it "on top" of your current release to keep all your settings and tasks.

WatchDirectory v4.8.7 beta 1

On our forum we have a first beta available for WatchDirectory v4.8.7. The new version has several improvements when monitoring directories where files have "illegal names". More information and the download link are in this forum post.

Filter Scrips - Slightly underdocumented

Q&A

WatchDirectory v4.7 and higher have support for filter scripts, run a little batch script to decide if a detected file should be processed by a task. This is a new option on the Filter Events settings of your task.

Before this new feature was introduced you could only filter based on (parts of) the filename or folder where the file was detected. For example "only run the task for files that match *.txt". The new filter script option gives you far more flexibility, your script receives all information about the detected file in Environment Variables and can, for example, check the contents of the detected file to decide wether the task should continue processing the file.

Several example filter scripts can be found inside the directory <Install Directory>\ExampleFilterScripts (typically C:\Program Files (x86)\watchDirectory\ExampleFilterScripts).

Example: Only email when files contain the word "Error"

A client was monitoring a directory where log files are created by an automated nightly process. Most log files are of no interest but sometimes one or two files contain error information and the client wants to be notified of those. He created a task using the Email plugin and enabled the option to attach the log file. Below is the filter script he used.

rem When called from the WatchDirectory Control Center, always process the "event"
IF "%WD_CALLEDFROMSETUP%" EQU "Y" GOTO :SayYes

rem use FINDSTR to check the contents of the file
FINDSTR /I "Error" "%WD_FILE%"
IF %errorlevel% EQU 0 GOTO :SayYes
rem this is not an error log, tell the task to ignore the event
GOTO :SayNo

:SayYes
ECHO Y > "%WD_FILTERRESULT%"
GOTO :EOF

:SayNo
ECHO N > "%WD_FILTERRESULT%"
GOTO :EOF

A few tips

Do not perform any heavy processing inside those scripts. If your script takes a long time to finish the WatchDirectory task will abort. A few seconds is okay, 10 seconds is not.

Make sure your script always writes its result (the single character Y or N) to the result file (echo Y > "%WD_FILTERRESULT%").

WxRemote v1.9.1 released

We just released version 1.9.1 of WxRemote. This release fixes a problem that caused the WxListener component to crash.

Version 1.9 -> 1.9.1

If you have version 1.9 installed (released last month), we recommend you to upgrade to this new release as soon as possible.

Version 1.x -> 1.9.1

This free upgrade to version 1.9.1 will show the current activity of your WatchDirectory and WatchFTP tasks. Full details in this blogpost.

Download the new version from the WxRemote home page.

WatchDirectory version 4.8.6 released

We just released a small update for our File Monitor program WatchDirectory. New and improved in this release:

• Fixed: The new Quick History viewer did not show all messages in the correct order.
• Improved: Added a "Find" box to the Quick History viewer.
• Fixed: The upload task did not properly check if it was connected to the FTP server when uploading the first file of a run.

Free Update

If you are running any v4.x version of WatchDirectory, this is a free update for you. Just install the new version "on top" of your current install and it will keep all your current settings and tasks. Download the new version here.

New releases of WxRemote, WatchDirectory and WatchFTP

WxRemote v1.9

This new version of WxRemote can show the last messages of your WatchDirectory and WatchFTP tasks. The Windows program (Wx Remote Control Center) by default shows you the very last message, click that message to see the last few 100 messages of a task. The web interface has similar functionality.

To support this new functionality you need to run version 4.8 of WatchDirectory and version 3.6 of WatchFTP (see below). After you install the new version of WxRemote, make sure to configure the new "Last Message" functionality on the computers where you run WxListener.

This is a free update for all WxRemote customers. Just install this new version "on top" of your existing install.

WatchDirectory v4.8

This new WatchDirectory version supports the new "Last Message" functionality of WxRemote (see above).

This is a free update for all WatchDirectory customers. Just install this new version "on top" of your existing install.

WatchFTP v3.6

This new WatchFTP version supports the new "Last Message" functionality of WxRemote (see above). Further changes in this release:

• New: SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 proxy support when connecting to an SFTP server.
• Fixed: When you do not download detected files, WatchFTP will now properly set environment variables for your email and bat script actions.
• Fixed: Previous versions did not support downloading to the root of an UNC path (\\server\share).

This is a free update for all WatchFTP customers. Just install this new version "on top" of your existing install.

WatchDirectory v4.8 beta 1

On our forum we have a new beta for our Directory Monitoring program WatchDirectory.

New in this beta

• v4.8 has support for some new features of WXRemote, the new v1.9 version of WXRemote will be released next week and will show the last messages from WatchDirectory (and WatchFTP) tasks.

More info and downloads

Please visit our forum for the download links.

WatchFTP v3.6 beta

On our forum we have a new beta for our FTP site monitoring program.

New in this beta

• v3.6 has support for some new features of WXRemote, the new v1.9 version of WXRemote will be released next week and will show the last messages from WatchFTP (and WatchDirectory) tasks.
• When you have the option "Do not download detected files" checked, most environment variables were empty. This new release will set most variables to proper values.

More info and downloads

Please visit our forum for the download links.

WatchFTP v3.5 released

A few days ago we released a major update for our FTP Monitor Program WatchFTP.

Free Upgrade

This is a free update for all customers. Just install the evaluation version on top of your current install so it will keep your settings and tasks. If you are upgrading a 32bit version to the 64bit version, make sure to read 64bit upgrade instructions first.

Changes in this release

This new release has a new file compare engine. Previous versions compared the FTP site to your local Windows directory, this release maintains a small database with FTP file information. This allows you, for example, to email notifications without downloading the detected files.

Also new is a "what has changed" window. Select a date in the past and (typically) the current date and you will see everything that has changed (new files, deleted files...) between those dates.

WatchDirectory v4.7.2 - FTP Upload bugfix

Today we released v4.7.2 of WatchDirectory, our program to monitor folders and files.

Changes in this release

Most important is a bug fix we implemented for the FTP Upload plugin. When a detected file was already present on the FTP server and is exactly the same size as the detected file and the connection to the FTP server was lost (or never established), the detected file would not be uploaded.

If you recently upgraded to WatchDirectory v4.7 and use the FTP Upload task, please install this new release.

More information

See this post for more information on changes and fixes in the v4.7 release of WatchDirectory.