How to monitor an FTP upload directory in coldfusion without using event gateways?

Having spent a couple of hours coding an event gateway solution, I discover that they are not supported by CF standard edition. Buggerit! So back to the drawing board.

I can see how I can check the folder's dateLastModified attribute using cfdirectory and so I can run a scheduled task to see when a new file has been up开发者_高级运维loaded, but whats the best way of storing/comparing the file list so as to get a list of just the ones added since last check.

General hints/links appreciated

Assuming that, for whatever reason, you can't use a gateway, the simplest soluition that springs to mind is to move files you've procesed to a separate directory. Then, your scheduled task can just deal with files in the FTP directory itself.

they are not supported by CF standard edition

Are you still using CF7? It has been supported by CF Standard Edition since CF8

As @Henry pointed out, you can use an Event Gateway.

If you decide not to use that approach, I'd suggest a ColdFusion scheduled task. Most foolproof algorithm for that task is storing the results of the last <cfdirectory/> call either in a persistent scope - application or server - or writing it out to a database or file (e.g. WDDX). Reason to hold on to all this information, rather than just a timestamp, is handling situations where newly added or changed files do not take on the correct timestamp for whatever reason (system clock off comes to mind).

If you use a database to capture the data you could use a MINUS/EXCEPT query in SQL Server or Oracle, respectively, to determine what's new. Else you'll need to do perform some nested looping in ColdFusion over the old a new queries to generate the list of new files.