Tuesday, September 13, 2016

WebCheck: A way to watch websites for change in content

There are a lot of times when quick updates are essential to a task. For example when universities release examination forms, or when there is an on line sale for something, or even better, when your favorite blog author publishes something new.

RSS was built to handle such situations, but as we all know, people don't always follow standards. In cases where RSS has not been implemented by site authors, we may use webcheck to keep a watch on the site for changes.

This is a Python3 dependent script that I've used for some time now to keep track of entrance exam notifications. The software and it's installation instructions can be obtained from:

https://github.com/theSage21/reimagined-chainsaw

The way this works is simple.

  1. Get a list of links to watch from a file provided by the user
  2. Download each link and call it the reference page
  3. After a certain amount of time, download everything again and see if something has changed with respect to the reference pages
  4. Repeat 3