What's the simplest way to monitor for changes to a single file?

Question

Should I look at shell notifications? Is there a good free component, or some example source code?

Or should I just start a one second timer and check the file's timestamp periodically?

It doesn't have to be elegant, just the simplest that will work. I am more interested in the processing which I will do when the file changes (it's a log file, whenever it gets updated I want to parse it and show some details of the test run).

Answer 1

Shell notifications are nice, but more complex than a timer. If a one second polling interval is good enough, you could use that.

But you can build a 'Monitor' yourself, which encapsulates the actual monitoring code. This Monitor raises an event if the file is changed. That monitor of yours can encapsulate a timer at first (easy, two minute job), but can be modified to use shell notifications later (better), without having to modify all your application logic.

Answer 2

Jedi VCL inherits change-notification/folder-monitor from RxLib.
RxLib also might be available for older versions of Delphi

BTW, you did not specify you Delphi version. Please, press RETAG link and add the proper tag.