FileWriter

The simplistic way to overwrite a file with new content is to simply open and truncate the file and write to it, but that risks data-loss in the case of a power loss or write error.

The goal of FileWriter is to package up the best practice in the one specific use-case of replacing a file entirely with new content.

It should at a minimum:

  • maintain permissions of the overwritten file.
  • keep a Unix-style backup file (original filename +"~")
  • use rename to create the backup file if possible.
  • call fsync to ensure durability
  • raise an exception if an unexpected number of bytes gets written
  • leave the backup intact if overwriting the file fails.

See the rspec specs for specifics.

In the future, the intent is to replicate more of the options provided by emacs (see the emacs manual )

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'file_writer'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install file_writer

Usage

   FileWriter.new(filename).write(contents)

or 

   FileWriter.write(filename,contents)

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/vhokstad/file_writer.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.