Monthly Archives: July 2012

Monitor Directory For New Files With WSH

Sajal wanted to monitor a directory, detect new file(s) and open them in their associated applications, I remember monitoring directory for changes in Linux in a Perl script. Doing something similar on Windows it seemed tough, but a after a little pondering I remembered about Windows Script Host (WSH), and after a bit of googling, coding, trial and errors, I came up with a script which does all that is required, it’s written in VBScript.

strDrive = "D:"
strFolder = "\\dropbox\\downloads\\"
strComputer = "."
intInterval = "5"

' Connect WMI service
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & _
strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

' build query
strQuery =  "Select * From __InstanceCreationEvent" _
& " Within " & intInterval _
& " Where Targetinstance Isa 'CIM_DataFile'" _
& " And TargetInstance.Drive='" & strDrive & "'"_
& " And TargetInstance.Path='" & strFolder & "'"

' Execute notification query
Set colMonitoredEvents = objWMIService.ExecNotificationQuery(strQuery)

' get a shell application object
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("Shell.Application")

Do
Set objLatestEvent = colMonitoredEvents.NextEvent
' strip out the real path
Response = Split(objLatestEvent.TargetInstance.PartComponent, "=")
' remove slash & quotes
FileName = Replace(Response(1), """", "")
FileName = Replace(FileName, "\\", "\")
' open the file in it's associated program
WshShell.ShellExecute FileName, "", "", "open", 1
Wscript.Echo FileName
Loop
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