website_update_check is a Python tool that checks simple websites for updates:
Features:
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Get custom notifications on your smartphone when the website you want to watch has changed (you need the Pushover App for this feature)
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Play a locally saved song when the website you want to watch has changed (uses VLC)
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You can choose how often you want to check the website for changes
How does it work?
In short, this tool downloads the website you enter every x seconds and compares its md5 hashes to detect changes of the website. Then you optionally can use the Pushover API to send a custom notification to your Android phone or iPhone. I am in no way associated or affiliated with Pushover, I just think it's a cool app that does what I want it to do for $4 (one week free trial).
Motivation:
Whenever we write exams in university the results will be posted online. We never know when exactly the results get posted which is why I was bored after checking it myself. With this tool I just get a notfication to my iPhone when the exam results have been uploaded. I know that you can use "javascript:alert(document.lastModified)" in the URL bar to get the last modified date of a website, but most of the time websites will just give you the current time which wouldn't work for my purposes. Some websites send the content-length in their header, but this isn't always the case.
Planned features / What to expect in the future:
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Support for websites where you have to log-in first
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Support for every website: Right now there can be issues when there is dynamic content like changing dates on a website (because it messes up the md5 hash and the tool thinks the whole website has changed)
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Delete temporary files website.txt and website_new.txt when the script ends successfully OR before it gets cancelled by the user (I'm not sure yet on how to do the second part)