PollingObserver reports new symlink as "FileMovedEvent".

Author: maxnoeCreated Jun 10, 2025Updated Aug 15, 2026

Code:

import time

from watchdog.events import FileSystemEvent, FileSystemEventHandler
from watchdog.observers.polling import PollingObserver


class MyEventHandler(FileSystemEventHandler):
    def on_any_event(self, event: FileSystemEvent) -> None:
        print(event)


event_handler = MyEventHandler()
observer = PollingObserver()
observer.schedule(event_handler, "data", recursive=True)
observer.start()
print("Watchdog running")
try:
    while True:
        time.sleep(1)
finally:
    observer.stop()
    observer.join()

Commands run in a separate window:

$ cd data
$ mkdir bar
$ touch bar/data
$ cd bar
$ ln -s data data.trigger

Output:

❯ python test_watchdog.py
Watchdog running
DirModifiedEvent(src_path='data', dest_path='', event_type='modified', is_directory=True, is_synthetic=False)
DirCreatedEvent(src_path='data/bar', dest_path='', event_type='created', is_directory=True, is_synthetic=False)
FileCreatedEvent(src_path='data/bar/data', dest_path='', event_type='created', is_directory=False, is_synthetic=False)
DirModifiedEvent(src_path='data/bar', dest_path='', event_type='modified', is_directory=True, is_synthetic=False)
FileMovedEvent(src_path='data/bar/data', dest_path='data/bar/data.trigger', event_type='moved', is_directory=False, is_synthetic=False)
DirModifiedEvent(src_path='data/bar', dest_path='', event_type='modified', is_directory=True, is_synthetic=False)

The second to last line is a FileMovedEvent, although what really happend was the creation of a new symlink.

Using the standard Observer, a FileCreatedEvent is send:

DirCreatedEvent(src_path='./data/bar', dest_path='', event_type='created', is_directory=True, is_synthetic=False)
DirModifiedEvent(src_path='./data', dest_path='', event_type='modified', is_directory=True, is_synthetic=False)
FileCreatedEvent(src_path='./data/bar/data', dest_path='', event_type='created', is_directory=False, is_synthetic=False)
DirModifiedEvent(src_path='./data/bar', dest_path='', event_type='modified', is_directory=True, is_synthetic=False)
FileOpenedEvent(src_path='./data/bar/data', dest_path='', event_type='opened', is_directory=False, is_synthetic=False)
FileModifiedEvent(src_path='./data/bar/data', dest_path='', event_type='modified', is_directory=False, is_synthetic=False)
FileClosedEvent(src_path='./data/bar/data', dest_path='', event_type='closed', is_directory=False, is_synthetic=False)
DirModifiedEvent(src_path='./data/bar', dest_path='', event_type='modified', is_directory=True, is_synthetic=False)
FileCreatedEvent(src_path='./data/bar/data.trigger', dest_path='', event_type='created', is_directory=False, is_synthetic=False)
DirModifiedEvent(src_path='./data/bar', dest_path='', event_type='modified', is_directory=True, is_synthetic=False)

Source: gorakhargosh/watchdog

View original on GitHub View discussion on GitHub