Re: Timed Servlet

[Henri Yandell <bayard@generationjava.com>]

On Mon, 30 Sep 2002, Davis, Jerome (Contractor) wrote:

> question #4: How can this be implemented? ( Kinda of got an idea of maybe a
> 'bot' of some type to fetch the header info of certain pages )

Sorry Jay. Missed this one.

Options are to either get the Page/Head of the website you hit. You then
grab the Date-Modified header [or some such name, I may have ti wrong].
Other option is to grab the page, MD5 it and store that [file/db]. Then
just compare the MD5s.

Former method is lighter, latter method works better as you don't rely on
the other persons server. Latter method needs to understand that the first
time you grab a page it hasn't changed.

I'd go with the former unless it proves unreliable.

Hen