Delphi overwrite file and wrong modified date time - delphi

I'd like to get a file last modified time in Delphi.
Normally something like FileAge() would do the trick, only the problem is: if I overwrite *File A* with File B using CopyFile, File A's modified date is not updated with current overwrite time as it should(?)
I get that: CopyFile also copy file attributes, but I really need to get the modified date that also works when a file is overwritten.
Is there such function? My whole application relies on modification time to decide whether or not I should proceed with files!
EDIT Just to clarify: I'm only monitoring the files. It's not my application who's modifying them.

The documentation for CopyFile says:
File attributes for the existing file are copied to the new file.
Which means that you cannot use base your program on the last modified attribute of the file, or indeed any attribute of the file. Indeed there are all sorts of ways for the last modified attribute of the file to change. It can in fact go backwards in time.
Instead I suggest that you use ReadDirectoryChangesW to keep track of modifications. That will allow you to receive notifications whenever a file is modified. You can write your program in an event based manner based on the ReadDirectoryChangesW API.
If you can't use ReadDirectoryChangesW and the file attributes, then you'll have to base your decisions on the contents of the file.

Related

Do not replace existing file when uploading file with same name Microsoft Graph API

How can I prevent replacing the existing file with a new file which has the same name, when I upload file to one drive?
I am using PUT /me/drive/items/{parent-id}:/{filename}:/content docs end point.
I instead need to keep indexing (test.jpg, test (1).jpg) or, just like google drive does, add two files with the same name.
You can control this behavior using Instance Attributes, specifically the #microsoft.graph.conflictBehavior query parameter. There are three supported conflict behaviors; fail, replace (the default), and rename.
The conflict resolution behavior for actions that create a new item. You can use the values fail, replace, or rename. The default for PUT is replace. An item will never be returned with this annotation. Write-only.
In order to have it automatically rename the file, you add #microsoft.graph.conflictBehavior=rename as a query parameter to your URI.
PUT /me/drive/items/{parent-id}:/{filename}:/content?#microsoft.graph.conflictBehavior=rename

How to create and load a configuration file in dxl

I have a script which saves some files at a given location. It works fine but when I send this code to someone else, he has to change the paths in the code. It's not comfortable for someone who does not know what is in that code and for me to explain every time where and how the code should be changed.
I want to get this path in a variable which will be taken from the configuration file. So it will be easier for everyone to change just this config file and nothing in my code. But I have never done this before and could not find any information on how I can do this in the internet.
PS: I do not have any code and I ask about an ultimate solution but it is really difficult to find something good in the internet about dxl, especially since I'm new with that. Maybe someone of you already does that or has an idea how it could be done?
DXL has a perm to read the complete context of a file into a variable: string readFile (string) (or Buffer readFile (string))
you can split the output by \n and then use regular expressions to find all lines that match the pattern
^\s*([^;#].*)\s*=\s*(.*)\s*$
(i.e. key = value - where comment lines start with ; or #)
But in DOORS I prefer using DOORS modules as configuration modules. Object Heading can be the key, Object Text can be the value.
Hardcode the full name of the configuration module into your DXL file and the user can modify the behaviour of the application.
The advantage over a file is that you need not make assumptions on where the config file is to be stored on the file system.
It really depends on your situation. You are going to need to be a little more specific about what you mean by "they need to change the paths in the code". What are these paths to? Are they DOORS module paths, are they paths to local/network files, or are the something else entirely?
Like user3329561 said, you COULD use a DOORS module as a configuration file. I wouldn't recommend it though, simply because that is not what DOORS modules were designed for. DOORS is fully capable of reading system files in one line at a time as well as all at once, but I can't recommend that option either until I know what types of paths you want to load and why.
I suspect that there is a better solution for your problem that will present itself once more information is provided.
I had the same problem, I needed to specify the path of my configuration file used in my dxl script.
I solved this issue passing the directory path as a parameter to DOORS.exe as follow:
"...\DOORS\9.3\bin\doors.exe" -dxl "string myVar = \"Hello Word\"
then in my dxl script, the variable myVar is a global variable.

how to overwrite, or delete the file, used by writefile() calls?

I use the following to save screen output to a file
writefile("file.txt"),
tex(expression),
closefile()
The above sends the output of the tex() to the file automatically. which is all and well and what I want. (side-point: It also sends an annoying NIL line each time to the file, which I had to parse put later).
Now, when running the above code again, the file is appended to, which is not what I want. I want to either overwrite the file each time, or if there is a way to delete the file, so I can call delete on it before.
I looked at help and not able to find a command to delete a file, and I also see no option to tell writefile() to overwrite the file?
Is there an option or way around this? I am on windows 7, Maxima version: 5.36.1
Lisp: SBCL 1.2.7
I guess you are trying to capture the output of tex into a file. If so, here are a couple of other ways to do it:
tex (expr, destination);
where destination is either a file name (which is appended) or a stream, as created by opena or openw and closed by close. By the way, destination could be false, in which case tex returns a string.
with_stdout (destination, tex (expr));
where again destination is either a file name (which is appended or clobbered, as determined by the global flag file_output_append) or a stream.
with_stdout could be useful if you want to mix in some output not generated by tex, e.g., print("% some commentary");.

Add new values to XML dynamically

I have an XML file in my app resources folder. I am trying to update that file with new dictionaries dynamically. In other words I am trying to edit an existing XML file to add new keys and values to it.
First of all can we edit a static XML file and add new dictionary with keys and values to it. What is the best way to do this.
In general, you can read an XML file into a document object (choose your language), use methods to modify it (add your new dictionary), and (re-)write it back out to either the original XML file, or a new one.
That's straightforward ... just roll up the ol' sleeves and code it up.
The real problem comes in with formatting in the XML file before and after said additions.
If you are going to 'unix diff' the XML file before and after, then order is important. Some standard XML processors do better with order than others.
If the order changes behind the scenes, and is gratuitously propagated into your output file, you lose standard diffing advantages, such as some gui differs, and some scm diffs (svn, cvs, etc.).
For example, browse to:
Order of XML attributes after DOM processing
They discuss that DOM loses order where SAX does not.
You can also write a custom XML 'diff'er (there may be such off-the-shelf ... for example check out 'http://diffxml.sourceforge.net/') that compares 2 XML documents tag-by-tag, attribute-by-attribute, etc.
Perhaps some standard XML-related tool such as XSLT will allow you to keep the formatting constant without changing tag or attribute order. You'd have to research that.
BTW, a related problem is the config (.ini) file problem ... many common processors flippantly announce that the write-order may not agree with the read-order.

Lua - My documents path and file creation date

I'm planning to do a program with Lua that will first of all read specific files
and get information from those files. So my first question is whats the "my documents" path name? I have searched a lot of places, but I'm unable to find anything. My second question is how can I use the first four letters of a file name to see which one is the newest made?
Finding the files in "my documents" then find the newest created file and read it.
The reading part shouldn't be a problem, but navigating to "my documents" and finding the newest created file in a folder.
For your first question, depends how robust you want your script to be. You could use Lua's builtin os.getenv() to get a variety of environment vars related to user, such as USERNAME, USERPROFILE, HOMEDRIVE, HOMEPATH. Example:
username = os.getenv('USERNAME')
dir = 'C:\\users\\' .. username .. '\\Documents'
For the second question, there is no builtin mechanism in Windows to have the file creation or modification timestamp as part of the filename. You could read the creation or modification timestamp, via a C extension you create or using an existing Lua library like lfs. Or you could read the contents of a folder and parse the filenames if they were named according to the pattern you mention. Again there is nothing built into Lua to do this, you would either use os.execute() or lfs or, again, your own C extension module, or combinations of these.

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