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How to get a file close event in python

Using python 2.7 on windows 7 64 bit machine.
How to get a file close event:
when file is opened in a new process of file opener (like notepad, wordpad which opens file everytime in new process of wordpad)
when file is opened in a tab of file opener (like notepad++, which opens all files in new tab but there exist only a single process of notepad++ running)
So, how to get file close event in above cases? Is it possible to achieve above cases through a common code? I am dealing with different file types

This has proven to be a very easy task for *nix systems, but on Windows, getting a file close event is not a simple task. Read below the summary of common methods grouped by OS'es.
For Linux
On Linux, the filesystem changes can be easily monitored, and in great detail. The best tool for this is the kernel feature called inotify, and there is a Python implementation that uses it, called Pynotify.
Pyinotify
Pyinotify is a Python module for monitoring filesystems changes. Pyinotify relies on a Linux Kernel feature (merged in kernel 2.6.13) called inotify, which is an event-driven notifier. Its notifications are exported from kernel space to user space through three system calls. Pyinotify binds these system calls and provides an implementation on top of them offering a generic and abstract way to manipulate those functionalities.
Here you can find the list of the events that can be monitored with Pynotify.
Example usage:
import pyinotify
class EventHandler(pyinotify.ProcessEvent):
def process_IN_CLOSE_NOWRITE(self, event):
print "File was closed without writing: " + event.pathname
def process_IN_CLOSE_WRITE(self, event):
print "File was closed with writing: " + event.pathname
def watch(filename):
wm = pyinotify.WatchManager()
mask = pyinotify.IN_CLOSE_NOWRITE | pyinotify.IN_CLOSE_WRITE
wm.add_watch(filename, mask)
eh = EventHandler()
notifier = pyinotify.Notifier(wm, eh)
notifier.loop()
if __name__ == '__main__':
watch('/path/to/file')
For Windows
Situation for Windows is quite a bit more complex than for Linux. Most libraries rely on ReadDirectoryChanges API which is restricted and can't detect finer details like file close event. There are however other methods for detecting such events, so read on to find out more.
Watcher
Note: Watcher has been last updated in February 2011, so its probably safe to skip this one.
Watcher is a low-level C extension for receiving file system updates using the ReadDirectoryChangesW API on Windows systems. The package also includes a high-level interface to emulate most of the .NET FileSystemWatcher API.
The closest one can get to detecting file close events with Watcher is to monitor the FILE_NOTIFY_CHANGE_LAST_WRITE and/or FILE_NOTIFY_CHANGE_LAST_ACCESS events.
Example usage:
import watcher
w = watcher.Watcher(dir, callback)
w.flags = watcher.FILE_NOTIFY_CHANGE_LAST_WRITE
w.start()
Watchdog
Python API and shell utilities to monitor file system events. Easy install: $ pip install watchdog. For more info visit the documentation.
Watchdog on Windows relies on the ReadDirectoryChangesW API, which brings its caveats as with Watcher and other libraries relying on the same API.
Pywatch
A python near-clone of the Linux watch command. The pywatch.watcher.Watcher class can be told to watch a set of files, and given a set of commands to run whenever any of those files change. It can only monitor the file changed event, since it relies on polling the stat's st_mtime.
Bonus for Windows with NTFS:
NTFS USN Journal
The NTFS USN (Update Sequence Number) Journal is a feature of NTFS which maintains a record of changes made to the volume. The reason it is listed as a Bonus is because unlike the other entries, it is not a specific library, but rather a feature existing on NTFS system. So if you are using other Windows filesystems (like FAT, ReFS, etc..) this does not apply.
The way it works it that the system records all changes made to the volume in the USN Journal file, with each volume having its own instance. Each record in the Change Journal contains the USN, the name of the file, and information about what the change was.
The main reason this method is interesting for this question is that, unlike most of the other methods, this one provides a way to detect a file close event, defined as USN_REASON_CLOSE. More information with a complete list of events can be found in this MSDN article. For a complete documentation about USN Journaling, visit this MSDN page.
There are multiple ways to access the USN Journal from Python, but the only mature option seems to be the ntfsjournal module.
The "proper" way for Windows:
File system filter driver
As descibed on the MSDN page:
A file system filter driver is an optional driver that adds value to
or modifies the behavior of a file system. A file system filter driver
is a kernel-mode component that runs as part of the Windows executive.
A file system filter driver can filter I/O operations for one or more
file systems or file system volumes. Depending on the nature of the
driver, filter can mean log, observe, modify, or even prevent. Typical
applications for file system filter drivers include antivirus
utilities, encryption programs, and hierarchical storage management
systems.
It is not an easy task to implement a file system filter driver, but for someone who would like to give it a try, there is a good introduction tutorial on CodeProject.
P.S. Check #ixe013's answer for some additional info about this method.
Multiplatform
Qt's QFileSystemWatcher
The QFileSystemWatcher class provides an interface for monitoring files and directories for modifications. This class was introduced in Qt 4.2.
Unfortunately, its functionality is fairly limited, as it can only detect when a file has been modified, renamed or deleted, and when a new file was added to a directory.
Example usage:
import sys
from PyQt4 import QtCore
def directory_changed(path):
print('Directory Changed: %s' % path)
def file_changed(path):
print('File Changed: %s' % path)
app = QtCore.QCoreApplication(sys.argv)
paths = ['/path/to/file']
fs_watcher = QtCore.QFileSystemWatcher(paths)
fs_watcher.directoryChanged.connect(directory_changed)
fs_watcher.fileChanged.connect(file_changed)
app.exec_()

The problem you are facing is not with Python, but with Windows. It can be done, but you will have to write some non-trival C/C++ code for it.
A file open or a file close user mode notification does not exist in userland on Windows. That's why the libraries suggested by others do not have file close notification. In Windows, the API to detect changes in userland is ReadDirectoryChangesW. It will alert you of one of the following notifications :
FILE_ACTION_ADDED if a file was added to the directory.
FILE_ACTION_REMOVED if a file was removed from the directory.
FILE_ACTION_MODIFIED if a file was modified. This can be a change in the time stamp or attributes.
FILE_ACTION_RENAMED_OLD_NAME if a file was renamed and this is the old name.
FILE_ACTION_RENAMED_NEW_NAME if a file was renamed and this is the new name.
No amount of Python can change what Windows provides you with.
To get a file close notification, tools like Process Monitor install a Minifilter that lives in the kernel, near the top of other filters like EFS.
To acheive what you want, you would need to:
Install a Minifilter that has the code to send events back to userland. Use Microsoft's Minispy sample, it is stable and fast.
Convert the code from the user program to make it a Python extension (minispy.pyd) that exposes a generator that produces the events. This is the hard part, I will get back to that.
You will have to filter out events, you won't beleive the amount of IO goes on an idle Windows box!
Your Python program can then import your extension and do its thing.
The whole thing looks something like this :
Of course you can have EFS over NTFS, this is just to show that your minifilter would be above all that.
The hard parts :
Your minifilter will have to be digitally signed by an authority Microsoft trusts. Verising comes to mind but there are others.
Debugging requires a separate (virtual) machine, but you can make your interface easy to mock.
You will need to install the minifilter with an account that has adminstrator rights. Any user will be able to read events.
You will have to deal with multi-users your self. There is only one minifilter for many users.
You will have to convert user program from the MiniSpy sample to a DLL, which you will wrap with a Python extension.
The last two are the hardest.

You can use Pyfanotyfi or butter.
I think you'll find this link very usefull: Linux file system events with C, Python and Ruby
There you will find an example about doing exactly what you want(using pyinotify) this is the code:
import pyinotify
DIR_TO_WATCH="/tmp/notify-dir"
FILE_TO_WATCH="/tmp/notify-dir/notify-file.txt"
wm = pyinotify.WatchManager()
dir_events = pyinotify.IN_DELETE | pyinotify.IN_CREATE
file_events = pyinotify.IN_OPEN | pyinotify.IN_CLOSE_WRITE | pyinotify.IN_CLOSE_NOWRITE
class EventHandler(pyinotify.ProcessEvent):
def process_IN_DELETE(self, event):
print("File %s was deleted" % event.pathname) #python 3 style print function
def process_IN_CREATE(self, event):
print("File %s was created" % event.pathname)
def process_IN_OPEN(self, event):
print("File %s was opened" % event.pathname)
def process_IN_CLOSE_WRITE(self, event):
print("File %s was closed after writing" % event.pathname)
def process_IN_CLOSE_NOWRITE(self, event):
print("File %s was closed after reading" % event.pathname)
event_handler = EventHandler()
notifier = pyinotify.Notifier(wm, event_handler)
wm.add_watch(DIR_TO_WATCH, dir_events)
wm.add_watch(FILE_TO_WATCH, file_events)
notifier.loop()

I have not found a package that captures open and close events on Windows. As others have mentioned, pyinotify, is an excellent option for Linux based operating systems.
Since I wasn't able to watch for the closed event, I settled for the modified event. It's very much an 'after the fact' type of solution (ie. I can't pause until I see a file is closed). But, this has worked surprisingly well.
I've used the watchdog package. The code below is from their sample implementation and watches the current directory if you don't pass a path on the command line, otherwise it watches the path you pass.
Example call: python test.py or python test.py C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop
import sys
import time
import logging
from watchdog.observers import Observer
from watchdog.events import LoggingEventHandler
if __name__ == "__main__":
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO,
format='%(asctime)s - %(message)s',
datefmt='%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
path = sys.argv[1] if len(sys.argv) > 1 else '.'
event_handler = LoggingEventHandler()
observer = Observer()
observer.schedule(event_handler, path, recursive=True)
observer.start()
try:
while True:
time.sleep(1)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
observer.stop()
observer.join()
This code will show you when files are created, modified, deleted or renamed/moved. You can filter by just modified by watching for the on_modified event.

Python: Windows System File

In python, how can I identify a file that is a "window system file". From the command line I can do this with the following command:
ATTRIB "c:\file_path_name.txt"
If the return has the "S" character, then it's a windows system file. I cannot figure out the equivilant in python. A few example of similar queries look like this:
Is a file writeable?
import os
filePath = r'c:\testfile.txt'
if os.access(filePath, os.W_OK):
print 'writable'
else:
print 'not writable'
another way...
import os
import stat
filePath = r'c:\testfile.txt'
attr = os.stat(filePath)[0]
if not attr & stat.S_IWRITE:
print 'not writable'
else:
print 'writable'
But I can't find a function or enum to identify a windows system file. Hopefully there's a built in way to do this. I'd prefer not to have to use win32com or another external module.
The reason I want to do this is because I am using os.walk to copy files from one drive to another. If there was a way to walk the directory tree while ignoring system files that may work too.
Thanks for reading.
Here's the solutions I came up with based on the answer:
Using win32api:
import win32api
import win32con
filePath = r'c:\test_file_path.txt'
if not win32api.GetFileAttributes(filePath) & win32con.FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM:
print filePath, 'is not a windows system file'
else:
print filePath, 'is a windows system file'
and using ctypes:
import ctypes
import ctypes.wintypes as types
# From pywin32
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM = 0x4
kernel32dll = ctypes.windll.kernel32
class WIN32_FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DATA(ctypes.Structure):
_fields_ = [("dwFileAttributes", types.DWORD),
("ftCreationTime", types.FILETIME),
("ftLastAccessTime", types.FILETIME),
("ftLastWriteTime", types.FILETIME),
("nFileSizeHigh", types.DWORD),
("nFileSizeLow", types.DWORD)]
def isWindowsSystemFile(pFilepath):
GetFileExInfoStandard = 0
GetFileAttributesEx = kernel32dll.GetFileAttributesExA
GetFileAttributesEx.restype = ctypes.c_int
# I can't figure out the correct args here
#GetFileAttributesEx.argtypes = [ctypes.c_char, ctypes.c_int, WIN32_FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DATA]
wfad = WIN32_FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DATA()
GetFileAttributesEx(pFilepath, GetFileExInfoStandard, ctypes.byref(wfad))
return wfad.dwFileAttributes & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM
filePath = r'c:\test_file_path.txt'
if not isWindowsSystemFile(filePath):
print filePath, 'is not a windows system file'
else:
print filePath, 'is a windows system file'
I wonder if pasting the constant "FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM" in my code is legit, or can I get its value using ctypes as well?

But I can't find a function or enum to identify a windows system file. Hopefully there's a built in way to do this.
There is no such thing. Python's file abstraction doesn't have any notion of "system file", so it doesn't give you any way to get it. Also, Python's stat is a very thin wrapper around the stat or _stat functions in Microsoft's C runtime library, which doesn't have any notion of "system file". The reason for this is that both Python files and Microsoft's C library are both designed to be "pretty much like POSIX".
Of course Windows also has a completely different abstraction for files. But this one isn't exposed by the open, stat, etc. functions; rather, there's a completely parallel set of functions like CreateFile, GetFileAttributes, etc. And you have to call those if you want that information.
I'd prefer not to have to use win32com or another external module.
Well, you don't need win32com, because this is just Windows API, not COM.
But win32api is the easiest way to do it. It provides a nice wrapper around GetFileAttributesEx, which is the function you want to call.
If you don't want to use an external module, you can always call Windows API functions via ctypes instead. Or use subprocess to run command-line tools (like ATTRIB—or, if you prefer, like DIR /S /A-S to let Windows do the recursive-walk-skipping-system-files bit for you…).
The ctypes docs show how to call Windows API functions, but it's a little tricky the first time.
First you need to go to the MSDN page to find out what DLL you need to load (kernel32), and whether your function has separate A and W variants (it does), and what values to pass for any constants (you have to follow a link to another page, and know how C enums works, to find out that GetFileExInfoStandard is 0), and then you need to figure out how to define any structs necessary. In this case, something like this:
from ctypes import *
kernel = windll.kernel32
GetFileExInfoStandard = 0
GetFileAttributesEx = kernel.GetFileAttributesEx
GetFileAttributesEx.restype = c_int
GetFileAttributesEx.argypes = # ...
If you really want to avoid using win32api, you can do the work to finish the ctypes wrapper yourself. Personally, I'd use win32api.
Meanwhile:
The reason I want to do this is because I am using os.walk to copy files from one drive to another. If there was a way to walk the directory tree while ignoring system files that may work too.
For that case, especially given your complaint that checking each file was too slow, you probably don't want to use os.walk either. Instead, use FindFirstFileEx, and do the recursion manually. You can distinguish files and directories without having to stat (or GetFileAttributesEx) each file (which os.walk does under the covers), you can filter out system files directly inside the find function instead of having to stat each file, etc.
Again, the options are the same: use win32api if you want it to be easy, use ctypes otherwise.
But in this case, I'd take a look at Ben Hoyt's betterwalk, because he's already done 99% of the ctypes-wrapping, and 95% of the rest of the code, that you want.

PyGTK/GIO: monitor directory for changes recursively

Take the following demo code (from the GIO answer to this question), which uses a GIO FileMonitor to monitor a directory for changes:
import gio
def directory_changed(monitor, file1, file2, evt_type):
print "Changed:", file1, file2, evt_type
gfile = gio.File(".")
monitor = gfile.monitor_directory(gio.FILE_MONITOR_NONE, None)
monitor.connect("changed", directory_changed)
import glib
ml = glib.MainLoop()
ml.run()
After running this code, I can then create and modify child nodes and be notified of the changes. However, this only works for immediate children (I am aware that the docs don't say otherwise). The last of the following shell commands will not result in a notification:
touch one
mkdir two
touch two/three
Is there an easy way to make it recursive? I'd rather not manually code something that looks for directory creation and adds a monitor, removing them on deletion, etc.
The intended use is for a VCS file browser extension, to be able to cache the statuses of files in a working copy and update them individually on changes. So there might by anywhere from tens to thousands (or more) directories to monitor. I'd like to just find the root of the working copy and add the file monitor there.
I know about pyinotify, but I'm avoiding it so that this works under non-Linux kernels such as FreeBSD or... others. As far as I'm aware, the GIO FileMonitor uses inotify underneath where available, and I can understand not emphasising the implementation to maintain some degree of abstraction, but it suggested to me that it should be possible.
(In case it matters, I originally posted this on the PyGTK mailing list.)

"Is there an easy way to make it
recursive?"
I'm not aware of any "easy way" to achieve this. The underlying systems, such as inotify on Linux or kqueue on BSDs don't provide facilities to automatically add recursive watches. I'm also not aware of any library layering what you want atop GIO.
So you'll most likely have to build this yourself. As this can be a bit trick in some corner cases (e.g. mkdir -p foo/bar/baz) I would suggest looking at how pynotify implements its auto_add functionality (grep through the pynotify source) and porting that over to GIO.

I'm not sure if GIO allows you to have more than one monitor at once, but if it does there's no* reason you can't do something like this:
import gio
import os
def directory_changed(monitor, file1, file2, evt_type):
if os.path.isdir(file2): #maybe this needs to be file1?
add_monitor(file2)
print "Changed:", file1, file2, evt_type
def add_monitor(dir):
gfile = gio.File(dir)
monitor = gfile.monitor_directory(gio.FILE_MONITOR_NONE, None)
monitor.connect("changed", directory_changed)
add_monitor('.')
import glib
ml = glib.MainLoop()
ml.run()
*when I say no reason, there's the possibility that this could become a resource hog, though with nearly zero knowledge about GIO I couldn't really say. It's also entirely possible to roll your own in Python with a few commands (os.listdir among others). It might look something like this
import time
import os
class Watcher(object):
def __init__(self):
self.dirs = []
self.snapshots = {}
def add_dir(self, dir):
self.dirs.append(dir)
def check_for_changes(self, dir):
snapshot = self.snapshots.get(dir)
curstate = os.listdir(dir)
if not snapshot:
self.snapshots[dir] = curstate
else:
if not snapshot == curstate:
print 'Changes: ',
for change in set(curstate).symmetric_difference(set(snapshot)):
if os.path.isdir(change):
print "isdir"
self.add_dir(change)
print change,
self.snapshots[dir] = curstate
print
def mainloop(self):
if len(self.dirs) < 1:
print "ERROR: Please add a directory with add_dir()"
return
while True:
for dir in self.dirs:
self.check_for_changes(dir)
time.sleep(4) # Don't want to be a resource hog
w = Watcher()
w.add_dir('.')
w.mainloop()

Traversing FTP listing

I am trying to to get all directories' name from an FTP server and store them in hierarchical order in a multidimensional list or dict
So for example, a server that contains the following structure:
/www/
mysite.com
images
png
jpg
at the end of the script, would give me a list such as
['/www/'
['mysite.com'
['images'
['png'],
['jpg']
]
]
]
I have tried using a recursive function like so:
def traverse(dir):
FTP.dir(dir, traverse)
FTP.dir returns lines in this format:
drwxr-xr-x 5 leavesc1 leavesc1 4096 Nov 29 20:52 mysite.com
so doing line[56:] will give me just the directory name(mysite.com). I use this in the recursive function.
But i cannot get it to work. I've tried many different approaches and can't get it to work. Lots of FTP errors as well (either can't find the directory - which is a logical issue, and sometimes unexpected errors returned by the server, which leaves no log and i can't debug)
bottom line question:
How to get a hierarchical directory listing from an FTP server?

Here is a naive and slow implementation. It is slow because it tries to CWD to each directory entry to determine if it is a directory or a file, but this works. One could optimize it by parsing LIST command output, but this is strongly server-implementation dependent.
import ftplib
def traverse(ftp, depth=0):
"""
return a recursive listing of an ftp server contents (starting
from the current directory)
listing is returned as a recursive dictionary, where each key
contains a contents of the subdirectory or None if it corresponds
to a file.
#param ftp: ftplib.FTP object
"""
if depth > 10:
return ['depth > 10']
level = {}
for entry in (path for path in ftp.nlst() if path not in ('.', '..')):
try:
ftp.cwd(entry)
level[entry] = traverse(ftp, depth+1)
ftp.cwd('..')
except ftplib.error_perm:
level[entry] = None
return level
def main():
ftp = ftplib.FTP("localhost")
ftp.connect()
ftp.login()
ftp.set_pasv(True)
print traverse(ftp)
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()

Here's a first draft of a Python 3 script that worked for me. It's much faster than calling cwd(). Pass in server, port, directory, username, and password as arguments. I left output as a list as an exercise for the reader.
import ftplib
import sys
def ftp_walk(ftp, dir):
dirs = []
nondirs = []
for item in ftp.mlsd(dir):
if item[1]['type'] == 'dir':
dirs.append(item[0])
else:
nondirs.append(item[0])
if nondirs:
print()
print('{}:'.format(dir))
print('\n'.join(sorted(nondirs)))
else:
# print(dir, 'is empty')
pass
for subdir in sorted(dirs):
ftp_walk(ftp, '{}/{}'.format(dir, subdir))
ftp = ftplib.FTP()
ftp.connect(sys.argv[1], int(sys.argv[2]))
ftp.login(sys.argv[4], sys.argv[5])
ftp_walk(ftp, sys.argv[3])

You're not going to like this, but "it depends on the server" or, more accurately, "it depends on the output format of the server".
Different servers can be set to display different output, so your initial proposal is bound to failure in the general case.
The "naive and slow implementation" above will cause enough errors that some FTP servers will cut you off (which is probably what happened after about 7 of them...).

If the server supports the MLSD command, then use the “a directory and its descendants” code from that answer.

If we are using Python look at:
http://docs.python.org/library/os.path.html (os.path.walk)
If there already is a good module for this, don't reinvent the wheel. Can't believe the post two spots above got two ups, anyway, enjoy.

OS X: Determine Trash location for a given path

Simply moving the file to ~/.Trash/ will not work, as if the file os on an external drive, it will move the file to the main system drive..
Also, there are other conditions, like files on external drives get moved to /Volumes/.Trash/501/ (or whatever the current user's ID is)
Given a file or folder path, what is the correct way to determine the trash folder? I imagine the language is pretty irrelevant, but I intend to use Python

Based upon code from http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?MoveToTrash I have came up with the following:
def get_trash_path(input_file):
path, file = os.path.split(input_file)
if path.startswith("/Volumes/"):
# /Volumes/driveName/.Trashes/<uid>
s = path.split(os.path.sep)
# s[2] is drive name ([0] is empty, [1] is Volumes)
trash_path = os.path.join("/Volumes", s[2], ".Trashes", str(os.getuid()))
if not os.path.isdir(trash_path):
raise IOError("Volume appears to be a network drive (%s could not be found)" % (trash_path))
else:
trash_path = os.path.join(os.getenv("HOME"), ".Trash")
return trash_path
Fairly basic, and there's a few things that have to be done seperatly, particularly checking if the filename already exist in trash (to avoid overwriting) and the actual moving to trash, but it seems to cover most things (internal, external and network drives)
Update: I wanted to trash a file in a Python script, so I re-implemented Dave Dribin's solution in Python:
from AppKit import NSURL
from ScriptingBridge import SBApplication
def trashPath(path):
"""Trashes a path using the Finder, via OS X's Scripting Bridge.
"""
targetfile = NSURL.fileURLWithPath_(path)
finder = SBApplication.applicationWithBundleIdentifier_("com.apple.Finder")
items = finder.items().objectAtLocation_(targetfile)
items.delete()
Usage is simple:
trashPath("/tmp/examplefile")

Alternatively, if you're on OS X 10.5, you could use Scripting Bridge to delete files via the Finder. I've done this in Ruby code here via RubyCocoa. The the gist of it is:
url = NSURL.fileURLWithPath(path)
finder = SBApplication.applicationWithBundleIdentifier("com.apple.Finder")
item = finder.items.objectAtLocation(url)
item.delete
You could easily do something similar with PyObjC.

A better way is NSWorkspaceRecycleOperation, which is one of the operations you can use with -[NSWorkspace performFileOperation:source:destination:files:tag:]. The constant's name is another artifact of Cocoa's NeXT heritage; its function is to move the item to the Trash.
Since it's part of Cocoa, it should be available to both Python and Ruby.

In Python, without using the scripting bridge, you can do this:
from AppKit import NSWorkspace, NSWorkspaceRecycleOperation
source = "path holding files"
files = ["file1", "file2"]
ws = NSWorkspace.sharedWorkspace()
ws.performFileOperation_source_destination_files_tag_(NSWorkspaceRecycleOperation, source, "", files, None)

The File Manager API has a pair of functions called FSMoveObjectToTrashAsync and FSPathMoveObjectToTrashSync.
Not sure if that is exposed to Python or not.

Another one in ruby:
Appscript.app('Finder').items[MacTypes::Alias.path(path)].delete
You will need rb-appscript gem, you can read about it here