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4 urlwatch - A Simple URL Watcher
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10 This is a simple URL watcher, designed to send
11 you diffs of webpages as they change. Ideal for
12 watching web pages of university courses, so
13 you always know when something has changed :)
18 1. Create an "urls.txt" file and add one URL per
19 line that you want to watch.
20 2. Add watch.py as a cronjob or run it manually.
21 3. If something changed, you'll get a diff output
22 to stdout. If nothing changed, no output.
23 4. If you want to filter the web pages, because
24 there is some dynamic content that _always_
25 changes, create a "hooks.py" file that has a
26 filter(url, data) -> filtered_data function
30 Q: Where do I configure URLs?
31 A: Edit the file urls.txt.
33 Q: A page changes some content on every reload.
34 How do I prevent urlwatch from always
35 displaying these changes?
36 A: Edit the file hooks.py and add a handler for
37 the specific URL and strip the changing
38 parts. See hooks.py for more information.
40 Q: How do I use it as a cron job?
41 A: Simply add watch.py to your crontab. Make
42 sure the stdout of your cronjobs is mailed
43 to you, so you get the notifications.
45 Q: Is there an easy way to show changes of .ics files?
46 A: Indeed there is. See hooks.py and ical2txt.py
48 Q: What about badly-formed HTML (long lines, etc..)?
49 A: Use python-utidylib. See hooks.py for an example
53 Website: http://thpinfo.com/2008/urlwatch
54 Contact: thp [thpinfo.com/about]
55 Jabber: thp [at jabber.org]