Javascript - lastModifed

[jefferd]

Hi,
I have a web page with links to external files and I would like to include the date the external file was last modified in the href description. Our servers don't seem to support SSI or PHP.

Any ideas how to do it? It feels as though it should be fairly simple but I can't find anything on the web.

Cheers

Doug

[epots9]

Hi,
I have a web page with links to external files and I would like to include the date the external file was last modified in the href description. Our servers don't seem to support SSI or PHP.

Any ideas how to do it? It feels as though it should be fairly simple but I can't find anything on the web.

Cheers

Doug

jaascript is client side scripting and it can't read/write to files...unless you use ajax.

[mrhoo]

Using javascript is an expensive way to do this- and it only works for files on the same domain as the page with the links.

Much better to write a script on the server that will rewrite the html page
when you modify one of its linked files.

This script will add the modified date of a link to its title the first time you hover or focus it-
You can modify it to write all the modified dates into the link text in the onload handler,
but this really belongs in a server routine.

 
function titleModified(who){
    var aj= AJX(); // http request object, defined below (or use your own)
    var url, t;
    who= window.event? event.srcElement: who.target;
    url= who.href;
    t= who.title || '';
    try {
        aj.open("HEAD", url, false);
        aj.send(null);
        if (aj.status== 200) tem= aj.getResponseHeader('Last-Modified');
        else tem= '';
    }
    catch (er) {
        tem= '';
    }
    if(tem) who.title= t+' Last modified:'+tem;
    who.onmouseover= ''; // don't call again for this element
    who.onfocus= '';
}
 
function AJX(){
    var obj;
    if (window.XMLHttpRequest) return new XMLHttpRequest();
    else if (window.ActiveXObject){
        try{
            obj= new ActiveXObject('MSXML2.XMLHTTP.3.0');
        }
        catch(er){
            try{
                obj= new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
            }
            catch(er){
                obj= false;
            }
        }
    }
    return obj;
}
 
 
window.onload= function(){
    if(!AJX()) return false;
    var cnt= 0, who,tem, A= document.getElementsByTagName('a');
    while(A[cnt]){
        who= A[cnt];
        tem= who.href;
//next line to skip page bookmarks
        if(tem && !/^#/.test(tem) && tem.indexOf(location.pathname)== -1){         
            who.onmouseover= titleModified;
            who.onfocus= titleModified;
        }
        ++cnt;
    }
}