Chokidar: "ignored"-pattern, that works with anymatch, but not with chokidar

[Tilogorn]

I want to watch only for files with a specific extension (in my case .json), so ignored has to ignore everything that is NOT .json.

• Regex for matching everything except ".json": /^(?!.*\.json$).*$/ (found here on SO)
• Another version: /^(.(?!\.json$))+$/ (found here on SO)

Result: chokidar ignored all my test files, including ".json".

My guess: chokidar uses another regex-engine than default javascript, so I made a MWE with pure anymatch, which worked like expected:

var anymatch = require('anymatch');
var matchers = [/^(?!.*\.json$).*$/];
console.log(anymatch(matchers, 'foo.json')); // results in false
console.log(anymatch(matchers, 'foo.js'));   // results in true

Non-successfull MWE with chokidar:

var chokidar = require('chokidar');
chokidar.watch('testdir', {
    ignored: /^(?!.*\.json$).*$/,
}).on('add', function (filename) {
    console.log(filename + ' added');
});

Edit: This MWE actually gets executed and finished immediately without feedback. Maybe that is a hint? That behaviour was not visible in my original application (probably no script end because of my client/server-loops etc.).

Specs:

• node v7.10.1
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

[es128]

How about chokidar.watch('testdir/**/*.json', ?

[es128]

Oh, and the reason your original method is not working is

> /^(?!.*\.json$).*$/.test('testdir')
true

testdir is ignored right off the bat, so chokidar does not traverse into its contents

[Jakobud]

How do you ignore everything except specific file types that may or may not be in a subdirectory?

[vincenzo]

What @Jakobud said.

[AbdulMuqtadeer]

How do you ignore everything except specific file types that may or may not be in a subdirectory?

Does anyone have the answer to @Jakobud question?

[Tam66662]

@AbdulMuqtadeer @Jakobud @vincenzo

An answer was given here: https://github.com/paulmillr/chokidar/issues/951

But I couldn't get it to work. :(