CheckURL version 2.0
(C) 1999, Anders Nordby - anders@fix.no
Distributed according to the GNU General Public License (v2).
INTRODUCTION
What is CheckURL?
It is a flexible, handy tool to automatically check the content of URLs (web
pages, FTP indexes etc.) and send back notifications of changes in them by
mail. It now features recipient lists as well as filtering of unwanted/
uninteresting changes and the inclusion of the actual changes (not just
the indication).
COMPONENTS
1) The script itself, "CheckURLs". Run this to do your checking. Put it in
crontab to do checking automatically. Examples of crontab entries:
42 * * * * /your/path/bin/checkurl/CheckURLs
19 4 * * * /your/path/bin/checkurl/CheckURLs
32 8,12,18 * * * /your/path/bin/checkurl/CheckURLs
Whereas the first will run CheckURLs every hour at the 42nd minute, the
second every day at 04:19, the third at 8:32, 12:32 and 18:32 every day. See
crontab(5) (``man 5 crontab'') for more info.
Edit the PATH statement in CheckURLs if it complains about not finding the
tools it needs. Usually you won't need to (and shouldn't) change it though.
Erase cu.lock if CheckURLs doesn't run and you are sure it's not running
already.
2) The URL lists (located in lists/)
The URL lists are the main components of configuration. First there's four
lines of configuration that should be self-explanationable according to the
accompanying default URL list (important: do _not_ change the line numbers
of this or the commented lines).
Then you'll put the URL's you want checked. First the URL, then a text that
describes it (enclosed in double quotes), then a short keywords which in the
shortest way will make you remember the URLs content, and then eventually a
filename of a local filter which will be used only for this URL (if there's
a global filter defined, local override it).
Do not use underscores in the file names of the URL lists.
3) The filters (located in filters/)
The filters reads data from stdin, do it's filtering and write the remains
to stdout. This can be used to serve two purposes as I see it, to keep
uninteresting changes from leading to notifications (e.g. counters on web
pages, date/time in FTP indexes), and to keep uninteresting syntax from
appearing in the enclosed differences (like HTML tags).
Important here is, both the saved URL and the freshly downloded one will
both be sent through its filter (if specified in the URL list) before they
are compared.
4) The recipient lists (located in rlists/)
These are scripts (might as well be compiled programs -- whatever you wish)
that write a list of e-mail addresses to stdout (important: only mail
addresses here, no name, spaces or bullshit). The URL-notifies will be sent
to the e-mail addreses listed by associated rlist.
Note to 2), 3) and 4). You can have as many of those you want of course. :=)
Do look at the examples!
REQUIREMENTS
-Lynx, for the URL fetching part.
-Bourn shell, and the lot.
BUGS
Usually not mine. ;-)
HISTORY
-Couldn't be arsed to include the old history.
-As of 2.0, I removed the configure script. You need to read the README's
and understand the examples. I do not consider writing pretty interfaces for
clubies worthwhile.
FEEDBACK
Is very welcome. Questions and general inquiries, or whatever you want. Even
if you only use this, let me know!
You can find/contact me on:
http://anders.fix.no/
anders@fix.no
I'll put out contributed filters here, if I find them useful:
http://anders.fix.no/software/checkurl-filters/