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[nnd6a]

I'm trying to grab a list of items from a web page every day and look for changes since the day before. I should be able to work through grabbing the HTML each day, parsing out the list of items and then saving to a text file. However, I don't know how to approach the problem of comparing today's text file with yesterday's and determining which items that have been added or deleted.

Any hints to get me started would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[pbmods]

Heya, nnd6a.

You have a couple of options:

• If the server is configured to support caching properly, you can check the last-modified header sent with the document.
• Alternatively, you can hash the contents and see if the signature matches what you already have on file. E.g.,:
  
  

  $html = loadWebPage($url);
  if( sha1($html) != $yesterdaysSha1Hash )
  {
    processHTML($html);
    $yesterdaysSha1Hash = sha1($html);
  }