websitechanges

A simple python script to email you whenever a website changes.

Install

First install Node and Python on your system if you don't already. Then you will need the required packages which can be installed with pip:

pip install click numpy loguru scikit-image opencv-python

Then get the script:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/schollz/websitechanges/master/websitechanges.py

And now run it whever - in a folder, in a cron, etc.

Usage

$ python3 websitechanges.py --help
Usage: websitechanges.py [OPTIONS]

Options:
  --url TEXT         url to watch  [required]
  --folder TEXT      directory to store data
  --css TEXT         CSS selector of element to watch, default full page
  --to TEXT          email address of person to alert
  --smtpemail TEXT   SMTP email address
  --smtppass TEXT    SMTP email password
  --threshold FLOAT  threshold for sending email

The url is the specified URL.

The folder specifies where to store all the data and puppeteer information.

The css will take a CSS query for a specific element you want to view. Otherwise it will capture the whole page.

To be alerted you will need to set to (the email to alert), smtpemail (the email sign-in for the SMTP), and smtppass (the password for the SMTP). You can easily setup a Gmail account to be used as an SMTP provider.

Example

The simplest way to run is:

python3 websitechanges.py --url SOMEURL

This will automatically download puppeteer, which is used to gather the screenshot. It will also download a HOSTS file to block ads so that the website can be shown reproducibly.

Every alert will send you an image of the latest image, in low quality JPEG format in order to save on bandwidth.

Each time the script will only run once, so you will need to set up a cron job or a for loop to keep it continually running.

License

MIT