Any way to trigger Folder Action when adding file to any subfolder

applescriptautomatorfolder-action

I've created a Folder Action in Automator and applied it to a folder. But it only gets triggered when a file is added to the root of that folder, not to one of its subfolders.

Is there any way to get Folder Actions be trigger when changes occur in subfolders?

(And, no, I do not want to apply the Action to each subfolder; they are always changing, so I need it to be dynamic.)

Best Answer

Without writing a full-blown Objective-C app, this is pretty difficult to do well.

I wrote something you might be able to use a while back. Just put it up on Github here. It's a Ruby script that you should be able to use as long as you're comfortable in a shell and text editor. No Ruby knowledge required.

It's a bit dumb, in the sense that it just runs a shell command when a change is detected in the watched folder (or subfolders). You can use that to call an Applescript though. Should be some way to do the same for Automator workflows.

However, if you depend on the input from the folder action (i.e. the files/folders that triggered the action), this won't work.

You could probably modify the Ruby script to catch the path of the files/folders triggering the event, and then pass that to an Applescript or Automator action, but I didn't need anything that complex, so I just hacked this together.

Good luck.

Related Solutions

Unreliable Folder Action

In my and others' experience, Folder Actions are unreliable, especially with large numbers of changes. So the problem you're facing is not specific to your system, but a rather common one.

I suggest you rewrite your script into one that receives a folder as input, and performs the Markdown transformation on all files within. Have it trigger automatically whenever a file is written to by a launchd job, with the parent folder specified in the WatchPaths rule.

Since most programs on OS X perform atomic saves and thereby replace the previous file instead of simply modifying its contents, the folder will also be updated and the job will be triggered reliably.

Markdown transformation also shouldn't be too time consuming, and you can always ensure only to transform files using your script that were changed in the last X minutes.

How to execute a Folder Action or another Automator script when I make changes to a folder

Using launchd, you could save a property list like this in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ and load it with something like launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/automator_test.plist or by logging out and back in.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC -//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN
http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd>
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>automator_test</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>     
        <string>automator</string>
        <string>/Users/username/Desktop/Test.workflow</string>
    </array>
    <key>WatchPaths</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Users/username/Desktop/</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>0</integer> <!-- run at most every 0 seconds, by default 10 -->
</dict>
</plist>

Launchd only detects changes to files when they are saved atomically (or deleted and recreated every time they are saved). Most OS X apps perform atomic saves, but for example TextMate and vim don't.

Best Answer

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Unreliable Folder Action

How to execute a Folder Action or another Automator script when I make changes to a folder

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