FileTrack A nifty tool to help people track changes in files in real-time
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FileTrack Tags

monitor Watcher detect file watcher file monitor detect changes track people

FileTrack Description

The FileTrack application was developed to be a nifty tool to help people track changes in files in real-time.Not everyone in this world knows how to setup CVS or SVN to track changes in files. It would be horrendous if a non-technical person is required to install such a system everytime a file needs to be shared and co-edited in some way. The worst part of it is that in the real world, people do share files and co-edit them in many ways.The most common example is sharing Excel files for all the possible reasons (accounting, logistics, scheduling, etc.). Although Microsoft provides an automatic mechanism that notifies if a document is being modified at the same time if two persons try to edit it simultaneously, this only applies to Office documents. So here lies the big problem - the pain of data corruption when people overwrite one another's files. The inspiration to create this tool comes from the need to co-share and edit a special file format which is foreign to Microsoft Office. Microsoft provides a useful API for monitoring file system changes in .NET under System.IO.FileSystemWatcher class. There are assisted call-backs when the file referenced by an object from this class changes. The nice part of this is it works across LAN so in a private company network or even via VPN when someone is in different parts of the world, one can keep monitoring shared file changes.

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