Command-line options

WatchPage is a command-line utility and requires some arguments and options. The arguments and options between square brackets are optional.

For some usage examples please see the Examples page.

Usage

$ watchpage --help

watchpage [-h] [-V] --config CONFIG --results RESULTS [--dump] [--agent AGENT]

Watch webpages for changes

options:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  -V, --version      show program's version number and exit

Configuration:
  --config CONFIG    configuration file
  --results RESULTS  directory to store the results
  --dump             dump results and discard changes
  --agent AGENT      default user agent

Options

Configuration file

The configuration file will be used to get the targets to process and for each target the options to use. You can refer to the Configuration format for detailed information about the configuration file format.

Results directory

The results directory is used to specify where to save the results for each target. For each target will be created a file with extension .txt with the latest saved results. Each check will then compare the results with the previous results from the results directory.

Passing the --dump argument you can avoid to save the new results and simply compare the results with the previous results. This is useful to help you write the configuration file without saving the results.

User-Agent

The argument --agent will be used as default User-Agent for the HTTP/HTTPS requests. If not specified it will use the default WatchPage User-Agent. You can also pass "" to omit the default User-Agent.

The default User-Agent is WatchPage followed by the version number, but you can specify any desired default User-Agent using --agent 'User-Agent'

You can also override the default User-Agent for each target in the configuration file.