Page Watcher is a Perl-based program that watches web pages and reports changes. To do this it keeps a local cache of the page. The page can be checked for changes in its entirety or only the links contained within the page. The configuration file for this program may either reside in a default location or may be specified on the comand line.
The default location is: ~/.page-watch.cf
To specify the configuration file on the command line use the -cf option:
Syntax: page-watch.pl [-cf config.file]
The script is unique in a couple respects. The first is that it uses a configuration file to identify the pages to be watched. This configuration file allows for default values to be established and to permit overrides of the defaults on a page by page basis. For example. If you want to get notifed at work for most updates you can set the default to notify your work email address. But if there is a page that is of interest to someone else, you can override the email notification address for that particular page.
The program is also unique in that it can watch only the links on a page for change instead of the whole page. This is very useful for sites that contain both dynamic content and download links. If you are only interested in the fact that there is a new relase of your favorite software and not that the author of the page as updated some text on the page, this feature is very handy.
Installation
There is no fancy install script here. Just untar the archive and move the page-watch.pl to wherever you keep your local binaries; This is usually either ~/bin or /usr/local/bin. Next move the page-watch.cf file to ~/.page-watch.cf. It is now installed. Not very useful but it is installed.
Now you need to edit the ~/.page-watch.cf file. The file is annotated internally on format and configuration options. It is very straight forward. You are close to being done. The last thing to do is to test it manually by simply running the command. Once it works like you want schedule it in your favorite scheduling program like cron or any of its cousins.
Product's homepage
Requirements:
· Perl
· WWW::Mechanize
· Mail::Sendmail
What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]
· Added "headers" as a watchType option (value is suspect)
· Added support for defaults for notify and page watch type
· Moved some code around so as to not do unneeded work
· Moved some hard coded values from sendmail call to configuration variables
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