xfl is a simple Python module to store and compare lists of files and complete directory trees in XML. It uses the ElementTree module to provide a pythonic interface to XML.

xfl manages basic file lists including file and directory names, sizes, modification times and owners. The hierarchical structure of a directory tree is simply reproduced as nested XML tags. Here is a simple example:

<dirtree name="C:\Python25\Tools" time="1187522227.44">
  <dir name="i18n">
    <file name="makelocalealias.py" size="2080" mtime="1130526398.0" owner="BUILTIN\Administrators"/>
    <file name="msgfmt.py" size="5704" mtime="1144404866.0" owner="BUILTIN\Administrators"/>
    <file name="pygettext.py" size="22773" mtime="1130526398.0" owner="BUILTIN\Administrators"/>
  </dir>
  <dir name="pynche">
    <file name="ChipViewer.py" size="5158" mtime="1130526398.0" owner="BUILTIN\Administrators"/>
    <dir name="X">
      <file name="rgb.txt" size="18128" mtime="1130526398.0" owner="BUILTIN\Administrators"/>
      <file name="xlicense.txt" size="1381" mtime="1130526398.0" owner="BUILTIN\Administrators"/>
    </dir>
  </dir>
</dirtree>

Two XML file lists may be compared in order to check which files are identical, have been added, changed or deleted.

Usage:

Just run xfl.py from the command line to get information on its usage as a script.

To create a new XML file list:

xfl.py <root path> <XML file>

To create a new XML file list and compare to a previous state:

xfl.py <root path> <XML file> <previous XML file>

xfl is extensible: it is easy to import it in a custom script in order to store additional information about each file or directory. As an example, the provided script xfl-crc.py stores the CRC32 hash of each file to demonstrate a simple integrity checker. It could be easily extended to add MD5, SHA1 or SHA256 fingerprints.

License:

CeCILL v2, open-source.

Download:

Click on the icon below.