Page Update Checker Wiki / Update Checkers

Update Checkers

Update Checkers are like extensions for Page Update Checker. When you want to see if a web page has changed, often you don't want to look at the entire page. Checkers are custom-made tools that allows you to monitor for specific changes in web sites.

This page contains user-contributed Checkers, and you can feel free to submit your own checkers!

Installing Checkers

To install a Checker file:

Download and save the .puc file.
Open the Page Update Checker Options and select "Import..." and open the file.
The checker will then be available in the drop down menu for choosing a checker.

Checkers

Filter (Built-in to PUC)

by Carl Nygaard

This checker uses regular expressions to filter out certain information during webpage comparisons.

Ebay Bid Checker (Built-in to PUC)

by Carl Nygaard

This checker will check the price of an Ebay bid and keep track of the changes that it notices. Each time a bid price increases, you will be notified.

There are many other cool possible Checkers related to Ebay. If you make an Ebay Checker, be sure to submit it here.

Yahoo! Mail Checker 0.2 - Download

by Carl Nygaard

When you load this checker, it will automatically start checking http://my.yahoo.com/ (which has a new mail indication). Just stay logged on to Yahoo!. It will tell you when you have yahoo mail. In order to clear the notification, click the "Check Email" link on the My Yahoo! webpage or use the link provided by PUC when you select "Show me what changed."

Myspace Mail Checker - Download

By Andrew MacPherson

(Updated Feb 1, 2006) Use this checker on http://home.myspace.com/ while staying logged on to Myspace. It will tell you when you have new mail or comments.

This triggers a Page Update Checker alert when new messages or comments are received. When "Show Me What Changed" is selected in the alert window, a link is provided to check your email. Note: If you receive a new comment, this link will still direct you to your inbox, which doesn't make much sense.

Find Expression Checker - Download

By Carl Nygaard

(Added 2/19/06) Use this checker on any web page to look for specific text/regular expressions to appear in a page. Most people will be more interested in Tim Packer's Phrase checker (below), which will tell you when an expression changes.

After importing this checker, monitor a new page for updates. Then select the Find Expression checker from the checker list and click on Checker Properties. From there, you can add regular expressions. Any regular expression that you have checked will trigger an update event. (If you aren't familiar with regular expressions, most strings without punctuation are ok.) The checker will remember old expressions that you make. Since these can be rather complicated, you first supply a name to the expression so you know what it is for. This is probably buggy, so please feel free to fix bugs or report them.

Phrase Checker - Download

by Tim Packer

(Added Feb 20, 2006) Use this checker on any web page to look for a change in a specific part of the page (specified by regular expression).

This checker is a generalised version of Carl Nygaard's Ebay Price Checker (and owes most of its code to that and to Filter). Instead of having the Ebay HTML hard-coded in, you can specify your own regular expressions to search for. This works best with regular expressions which are always matched, but which have variant portions which change; for example 'Post Count: \d*' (which you could use on a forum to alert you when a new post is made) or 'You have \S*new messages' (which would match 'You have new messages' or 'You have no new messages'). It can, though, be used in the same way as the Find Expression Checker (in which case it will tell you if the phrase appears or disappears in the page). Remember that all matches are done on the HTML of the page, so you'll need to view the page source and include any HTML tags which appear within the phrase you're matching. As with Ebay Price Checker, Phrase Checker keeps track of the changes over time, and displays them in the 'Show me what changed' box. This is probably buggy, so please feel free to fix bugs or report them.

Phrase Ideas:

Ebay Search: If you're looking for one relatively rare item on eBay, then you can do a search for that item. On the search results page, you can have Phrase Checker tell you when the number of search hits changes. This might also be useful if you are hunting for a really good Buy It Now deal and you don't expect to see new items added all the time. Here's the regular expression (everything in italics): "sectiontitle">\d*</b> items found (Idea by Carl Nygaard)
This site: (hope this works ;) Here's the regular expression (everything in italics): <a name="UpdateCheckers">.*<a name="Wanttoshareyourown"> (by Axel Gross)

Want to share your own?

If you've made your own checker and would like to share it, it's easy. Just follow these steps:

Export the file in PUC's options menu.
Login to edit this Wiki (password for editting: barfisgross)
Upload the file using the "files" page
Edit this page and link to the file.

If you haven't made your own checker but would like to learn how, refer to Writing a Checker.