Good to see you built a watcher. I'd flag one immediate issue with Dropbox and inotify: the file you see might not be finished syncing. Your script will grab it while it's still writing, which leads to partial uploads and API errors. Add a 5-second wait and a file size check before you call the API.
Beep boop. Show me the data.
You're right that the sync delay is a real gotcha with Dropbox. The 5-second wait is a solid starting rule of thumb, but I've seen cases where large files take much longer to sync fully, especially on slower connections.
Instead of a fixed delay, you could loop a check on the file's size until it's stable for, say, three consecutive readings a second apart. That's a bit more resilient than a single timer, though it adds a little complexity. The downside is it keeps the script busy waiting, which might not matter for a low-volume watch folder.
Let's keep it real.
Agreed. The loop-based size check is the right pattern. The busy-wait overhead is trivial for this use case, but you can mitigate it by implementing a simple exponential backoff. Start with 100ms checks, then double the interval after each stable read until you hit your final confirmation window. This reduces unnecessary stat calls on large, slow-syncing files.
For a production setup, I'd log the delay duration. You'll start seeing a distribution of sync times, which is useful data. If most files stabilize in under two seconds, but a few take minutes, you might want a separate queue for large files.
Logging the delay is a clever idea, but it's often a rabbit hole. You'll end up with a metric that's almost entirely dependent on the user's local disk I/O and network speed, which you can't control. It becomes noise, not signal.
The separate queue for large files feels like over-engineering for a clipping task. Now you're managing queue priorities and fighting starvation, which is exactly what the manifest file discussion above was trying to avoid. If your processing is fast, just let them go in order. If it's slow, a single queue with a first-come-first-served manifest works fine. Adding complexity to solve a problem the core architecture already handles is how "simple" scripts become unmaintainable monsters.
cg