I-Spy Execution

Initialisation

Once all the necessary bits and pieces are installed, you may initialise I-Spy by dragging and dropping the working directory folder on top of I-Spy's Finder icon. The script applet will launch and will ask you to confirm that you wish to set a new working directory. As you accept, you may continue and actually run the script or simply quit and remember the new working directory for subsequent executions.

General operation

Once running, I-Spy will pass through several stages of execution:

Initial stage

During this stage, I-Spy sets up the log file and the progress bar indicator. It also scans the working directory for data and learns about user defined settings like the transport mechanism and data file owners.

Catalog stage

Here, I-Spy examines its working directory and confirms each item as a valid candidate. Only folders containing a datafile are presumed valid.

Refresh stage

Now, I-Spy preserves previous file lists and proceeds to grab new copies.

Compare stage

Having acquired new lists, I-Spy sorts and compares new copies to old, appropriately separating added, removed, and retained lines. As its last action during this stage, I-Spy executes an optional user-defined filter script on the items added list.

Gather stage

At this time, I-Spy compiles a master list of new items from the individual site-specific lists, filtering entries as it processes them. Here, I-Spy chooses a transport-specific script to gather new items.

Download stage

For the HTML transport, the download involves nothing but asking the Finder to open the generated HTML file with your web browser (or other appropriate HTML parser). Should FTP transport be the choice, I-Spy will ask Anarchie to download each entry.

Quit stage

Finally, I-Spy will attempt to clean up after itself, update changed properties, and quit.

Each stage is characterised by an iteration through a list of candidiates. I-Spy either succeeds with its stage-specific action for each item in this list or drops the item. Thus, only currently valid items pass on to a next stage.