Program started automatically when drop into a folder??

Hi everyone

I'm after some advice and i don't know if this has already been developed or not.
I'm wanting to be able to start a program automatically when its drop into a folder specifically a .max file.

This file will probably be within a zip folder so that will have to be extracted as well.

So hopefully it be work this way

My FTP - person drop zip folder - extracts itself - runs max file

Any help on how this could be done would be great,

Cheers
Si

re: Program started automatically when drop into a folder??

Hi

The general development should not be too complex depending on what technology you decide to use.

May I suggest that you provide some details on which programming language and environment you want to create this on, so that experts in that field may offer you more specific guidance regarding the available classes which you could use.

re: Program started automatically when drop into a folder??

I'm completely new to this so i wouldn't really know, I'm wanting to set up a small render farm that the company i work for can use.
What would be the best to go for??? It going to be running over the net on vista 64bit machines. The software's 3ds max.
Si

re: Program started automatically when drop into a folder??

In Java this would be dead easy: getting all the file names in a certain directory is done by a core class; checking if a file is in a 'busy list' is easy. If it isn't, put it in the busy list and go on.

Another thread checks whether or not the busy list is empty; if not, it starts another thread for executing a file in the busy list and repeats.

The synchronizing part is easy as well: it is partly implemented in the language itself and partly by a clever framework of core classes.

I'd pick Java for this job so it can be run (almost) anywhere.

kind regards,

Jos

re: Program started automatically when drop into a folder??

cool, i'll have a play!!! thanks for the reply

Si