This topic demonstrates how to synchronize disk folders.

Basic steps

To synchronizes folders, the following steps must be performed:

Demonstration

The following example demonstrates how to synchronize disk folders. Note that when synchronizing only folders, files within the folders are synchronized to the most recent version of the correspondingly named file.

VB.NET

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Imports Xceed.FileSystem Imports Xceed.Synchronize Try   Dim folder1 As AbstractFolder = New DiskFolder("D:\temp\folder1")   Dim folder2 As AbstractFolder = New DiskFolder("D:\temp\folder2")   Dim folder3 As AbstractFolder = New DiskFolder("D:\temp\folder3")   Dim syncOptions As New SynchronizationOptions()   syncOptions.UseMetaData = False 'By default, this value is true.   Try     Synchronizer.EasySynchronize(folder1, folder2, folder3, syncOptions)   Catch eSynch As Exception     Console.WriteLine("Synch error: {0}", eSynch.ToString())   End Try Catch ePrepSynch As Exception   Console.WriteLine("Prep-synch error: {0}", ePrepSynch.ToString()) End Try

C#

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using Xceed.FileSystem; using Xceed.Synchronize; try {   AbstractFolder folder1 = new DiskFolder(@"D:\temp\folder1");   AbstractFolder folder2 = new DiskFolder(@"D:\temp\folder2");   AbstractFolder folder3 = new DiskFolder(@"D:\temp\folder3");   SynchronizationOptions syncOptions = new SynchronizationOptions();   syncOptions.UseMetaData = false; //By default, this value is true.   try   {     Synchronizer.EasySynchronize(folder1, folder2, folder3);  }   catch (Exception eSynch)   {     Console.WriteLine("Synch error: {0}", eSynch.ToString());   } } catch (Exception ePrepSynch) {   Console.WriteLine("Prep-synch error: {0}", ePrepSynch.ToString()); }

Things you should consider

Here are the main questions you should ask yourself when synchronizing files:

• Do you want to filter the items that will be synchronized? Use filters.
• Do you want to specify which folder will be used as the master? Create a MasterItemParameter using one of the folders being passed for synchronization.
• Do you want to specify manually which folder will be used as the master? Use a MasterItemParameter created from one of the folders being passed for synchronization. Note that in certain situations, a conflict can arise (see File synchronization for more details) and a Conflict event will be triggered, most notably if the files in the folder specified as the master are older than the target files.
• Do you want to specify that a given target folder should be deleted? Use a MasterItemParameter created using a using an AbstractFolder-derived folder object whose underlying physical item does not exist.
• Do you want force a folder to be created in a given location? Pass an AbstractFolder-derived object whose underlying physical item does not exist.