What's New Pussycat?
Charly's Column – urlwatch
Experienced system administrators attach great importance to always being up to date when it comes to information technology. Urlwatch is a command-line tool that presents the latest news from websites that do not offer RSS feeds by email.
Some years ago, I reported on the Miniflux RSS feed aggregator [1] in this column, and I still use it. Miniflux is lean, fast, and easy to use. The media have been predicting the death of RSS feeds for what feels like an eternity, but it still has not happened. However, some websites simply don't offer feeds. I have to do something different here. What I need is a tool that alerts me when a particular website changes.
That's far more complicated than it sounds at first. Using a web service for this purpose (there are countless numbers of them) is out of the question for reasons of data economy. However, the biggest problem is something else. Things on websites that I don't find relevant are constantly changing. For example, a daily newspaper that I regularly read displays job ads that change with every reload. If I was notified every time, it would drive me crazy. There has to be a better way – and there is: urlwatch.
Written in Python 3, urlwatch is included in most popular distributions. If you want to know exactly if and which version of urlwatch is available in your favorite distro, you can find out on Repology.org [2]; DIY enthusiasts can use GitHub [3]. For example, I instructed urlwatch to keep an eye on the online news page for Linux Magazine (Listing 1) – pointlessly, because it actually still offers RSS.
Listing 1
Monitoring Websites
01 $ urlwatch --add url=http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News,name=LinMag
In my home directory below .config/urlwatch/
, urlwatch has now created a configuration file named urls.yaml
(Listing 2). So far, so good – but I want to be sure that I am only notified when a new news ticker post is published. I want urlwatch to ignore any other changes to the website.
Listing 2
urls.yaml
01 kind: url 02 name: LinMag 03 url: http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News
To do this, I briefly immersed myself in the website's HTML source code and discovered that every news ticker entry is introduced by a div
tag that contains the specification "td_module_9 td_module_wrap"
as its class
specification. This prompted me to append the following line to the configuration in urls.yaml
:
filter: element-by-id:td_module_9
Now urlwatch only alerts me when a new ticker entry appears on the website. There is a rich selection of alerting types; I opted for plain old email. All I have to do is enter the appropriate mail server, as well as the sender and recipient addresses, below .config/urlwatch/
in the urlwatch.yaml
configuration file's report
section. And, lo and behold, the electronic mailman was soon ringing the bell (Figure 1).
Infos
- "The Sys Admin's Daily Grind: Miniflux" by Charly Kühnast, Linux Magazine, issue 164, July 2014, http://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2014/164/Charly-s-Column-Miniflux/(language)/eng-US
- urlwatch packages: https://repology.org/project/urlwatch/versions
- urlwatch on GitHub: https://github.com/thp/urlwatch
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Endless OS 6 has Arrived
After more than a year since the last update, the latest release of Endless OS is now available for general usage.
-
Fedora Asahi 40 Remix Available for Macs with Apple Silicon
If you've been anticipating KDE's Plasma 6 for your Apple Silicon-powered Mac, then you're in luck.
-
Red Hat Adds New Deployment Option for Enterprise Linux Platforms
Red Hat has re-imagined enterprise Linux for an AI future with Image Mode.
-
OSJH and LPI Release 2024 Open Source Pros Job Survey Results
See what open source professionals look for in a new role.
-
Proton 9.0-1 Released to Improve Gaming with Steam
The latest release of Proton 9 adds several improvements and fixes an issue that has been problematic for Linux users.
-
So Long Neofetch and Thanks for the Info
Today is a day that every Linux user who enjoys bragging about their system(s) will mourn, as Neofetch has come to an end.
-
Ubuntu 24.04 Comes with a “Flaw"
If you're thinking you might want to upgrade from your current Ubuntu release to the latest, there's something you might want to consider before doing so.
-
Canonical Releases Ubuntu 24.04
After a brief pause because of the XZ vulnerability, Ubuntu 24.04 is now available for install.
-
Linux Servers Targeted by Akira Ransomware
A group of bad actors who have already extorted $42 million have their sights set on the Linux platform.
-
TUXEDO Computers Unveils Linux Laptop Featuring AMD Ryzen CPU
This latest release is the first laptop to include the new CPU from Ryzen and Linux preinstalled.