asked on

perl: last modified

I am looking for a way to get when a webpage was last modified on any server. I believe this informatin is in the mime http header, but I don't know how to access this infromation. I am looking for something like:
getLastModifiedDate('http://path/to/file.html');

HELP!! THANKS! :-)

periwinkle

Are you looking to write a program to find out the date on an arbitrary file on the server, or would you like to find out the date in the current file?

If you have server side includes enabled, you could simply use something like:



in the source code, and it will echo the date that the file was last modified.

If you wish to show the date another file was last modified through a cgi script, you'd use something like this in perl:

($READTIME, $WRITETIME) = (stat($filename))[8,9];

This will set $READTIME to the timestamp that a file was last accessed, and $WRITETIME to the timestamp of when it was last modified.

rw263

ASKER

periwinkle --

As I stated in my question, it is on a server I don't have access to. I want to see when a webpage was last updated. Server Side Includes are helpful if the file is on a server you have access to, the same with $filename. What I would like is to find out when a html page that I provide the servername, path, filename, (the URL) and get the last time it was modified. Hopefully this clears it up a little?

periwinkle

Your meaning wasn't clear in the original wording of the question, and I misunderstood what you were trying to do. I don't have an answer for what you are trying to do - sorry.

ahoffmann

simple answer: you can't
long answer: it might be possible if the maintainer of the page writes appropriate information into the .html file itself. This is most likely done in the <META ...> tags.

aryumin

#!/usr/bin/perl

use LWP::Simple;

$url = "http://server/file.htm";

($content_type, $document_length, $modified_time, $expires, $server) = head($url);
($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday) = (localtime($modified_time))[0,1,2,3,4,5,6];
$time = sprintf("%02d:%02d:%02d",$hour,$min,$sec);
$year += 1900;
$mon++;

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "$mday/$mon/$year, $time";

rw263

ASKER

aryumin --

this didn't work. When I tried to print out the variables that got sent from head($url), look at what I get:

content_type: text/html
document_length:
modified_timet: Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) mod_layout/2.10.6 mod_ssl/2.6.5 OpenSSL/0.9.5
expires:
sever:

Any ideas?

aryumin

The Last-modified HTTP header is not always available...
The MS IIS, for example, doesn't send this header for "active" content (ASP, pages with SSI, scripts, etc.)

hogberg78

Do you absolutely want to handle the headers yourself? Could you just write it into the body at the browser end with javascript:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~ppk/js/lastmod.html

ahoffmann

.. and if JavaScript is disabled ..

maneshr

rw263,

Did you get the solution you were looking for?

If so, please delete this question & free up your points, or award the points to the answer you found most useful.

Thanks,

rw263

ASKER

nothing found yet.

maneshr

rw263,

"..nothing found yet. ..."

":..I am looking for a way to get when a webpage was last modified on any server...."

Are there some sample URL's that you can post here?

i can take those URL's & see if i can get the last modified date of those pages.

Let me know.

rw263

ASKER

well the urls I am looking for are on secure servers, you need a name/pwd, and I would not feel safe giving out that info. Sorry.

maneshr

rw263

"..Sorry.."

I can understand your concern.

Without a URL, i am pretty much shooting in the dark. Seems like there is very little i can provide you in terms of a solution.

Hope you get a working solution soon.

rw263

ASKER

never figured this one out.

maneshr