Tracking changes to a website

Tracking website changes is useful for both web developers and users. Checking a website manually is impractical, but a change tracking script can be run at regular intervals. When a change occurs, it generates a notification.

Getting ready

Tracking changes in terms of Bash scripting means fetching websites at different times and taking the difference using the diff command. We can use curl and diff to do this.

How to do it...

This Bash script combines different commands, to track changes in a web page:

#!/bin/bash 
#Filename: change_track.sh 
#Desc: Script to track changes to webpage 

if [ $# -ne 1 ]; 
then  
  echo -e "$Usage: $0 URL\n" 
  exit 1; 
fi 

first_time=0 
# Not first time 

if [ ! -e "last.html" ]; 
then 
  first_time=1 
  # Set it is first time run 
fi 

curl --silent $1 -o recent.html 

if [ $first_time -ne 1 ]; 
then 
  changes=$(diff -u last.html recent.html) 
  if [ -n "$changes" ]; 
  then 
    echo -e "Changes:\n" 
    echo "$changes" 
  else...