8/May/2008 6:50

This was asked before to no avail.

Other than the creation date that is printed on a webpage by the developer,
is there a way to determine the chronological date of a webpage?

Sincerely,

Barry Karas

"Barry Karas" <barrykaras1234@comcast.net> wrote:

Translate please. I've not had my morning coffee yet.

Barry Karas wrote:

It was asked before and *answered* before. At length. Apparently you just
didn't like the answers. This doesn't change them, however. The only way to
determine a chronological date of a webpage that is not under your direct
control (eg., your very own webpage that you created yourself) is if the
webpage creator puts something to that effect on the page such as a change
log or the like.

So I suppose you could say you previously asked "to no avail" but "and I
didn't get the answer I wanted to hear so I'm asking the same thing again"
more accurately depicts what you are doing.

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!

.... et al. wrote:

That only shows you when the page was accessed. The OP wants to know when
the page was *created* or *updated* by the website owner.

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!

Barry Karas wrote:

That is something queried and answered with the HTTP. So you need
a program that uses this and lets you see the answers.

For your ordinary web-browsers;

'Firefox' lets you see this via 'about:cache'

'Internet Explorer' lists this as one of the columns in the
'Temporary Internet Files' pseudo-directory.

'Opera', i'm not familiar with how to do it there.



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Malke wrote:

If you are talking about the {Internet Explorers/Windows
Explorers} TIF pseudo-folder, mine shows different columns for
'Last Modified' and 'Last Accessed' as well as another one for
'Last Checked'. As i remember it 'Last Modified' values can show
realistic dates like 2005, 2002 for web-pages that hasn't been
updated since these dates.


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.... et al. wrote:

No, for the last time: the OP had a different thread where he asked the same
question. What he wants to know is a way to tell when the *content* of a
webpage has been updated. He wants to know if a website was last worked on
by the website owner in 1998 or last week. So no, we aren't talking about
anything available on the local computer because what the OP wants is not
possible unless the person who wrote the webpage puts that information on
it.

EOT for me.

Malke
--
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Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
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Malke wrote:

Yes, it is possible .. by looking at the HTTP communication:

RFC2616 "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1"
<http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt>


So the web-client (browser) doesn't explicitly query for the last
modified date but a web-server *should* include that value in the
response, and from what i have seen usually does.

However, i just checked the 'about:cache' in Firefox after going
to a web-site i made and put out on the web and that i haven't
updated in a few years. Unfortunately the 'Last modified' line
there shows todays date, in other words it is more the 'current
access date' then the last modified one, so i was wrong to state
that that is the place to look it up.


Fine. you are just plain wrong that it isn't something the OP can
get to know. The OP just need to use a tool that shows the
web-servers HTTP response for a web-page or other whatever
resource he 'GET's.


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.... et al. wrote:

Ahh, yes this is how i see it in Firefox:

Request a web-page.
From the menu choose 'Tools' : 'Page Info'
On the 'General' tab look at the 'Modified' date given.

For the homepage on the above mentioned site i see:
Modified: 28 June 2005 12:52:11

I really should start thinking about updating it. :-)

I must say i was taken aback by what the 'about:cache' page shows
.... ahh, but now i remember, i have to click just one link
further and i'll get to see the HTTP-server response:

Client: HTTP

request-method: GET

request-Host: (www.server.com) <- modified

response-head: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 03:01:30 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.32
Vary: Host
Last-Modified: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 11:52:11 GMT
Etag: ("nnnnnnn-nnnn-nnnnnnnn") <- modified
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 4329
Content-Type: text/html

charset: ISO-8859-1


Easy as pie.
Down to the second man! Well one hour on or off.


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"Barry Karas" <barrykaras1234@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:_ZydnbCkt7iTRr_VnZ2dnUVZ_tDinZ2d@comcast.com. ..
Firstly, the date shown on a webpage is either fake or a waste of time. Some
sites generate the date on demand, so its always today or very recent. If
the date is genuine then all it shows is if the web page hasn't been updated
for a while. As a web developer it isn't something I ever put on a page.

Secondly, this isn't really an xp question, so it might have been better
asked in a webmaster newsgroup such as alt.www.webmaster.

As to whether you can determine the chronological date of a webpage this
depends on the type of page and I suppose in part on the web-server. If the
page is dynamically generated (so say a .asp, .aspx, .php, .pl etc) then
other than downloading the page and comparing it with a previous version I
don't think there is any way. If the page is static html (so .htm or .html)
then you can query the server for the age of the file. For example if you
use CryPing (free from http://www.cryer.co.uk/downloads/cryping/) then you
can view the heads returned for a page, so:

C:\>cryping -v -n 1 -http www.cryer.co.uk
CryPing - from www.cryer.co.uk v1.3 (build April 2008)
Pinging www.cryer.co.uk for http status:

Reply from www.cryer.co.uk: 200 OK time=67ms
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 10:46:07 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.39 (Debian)
Vary: Host
Last-Modified: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:40:40 GMT
ETag: "6ce6870-2350-4808eb28"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 9040
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

and the "Last-Modified" shows you when the page was last changed, in this
case in April of this year. However I don't know whether all servers return
"Last-Modified", and as I indicated above it probably won't be included for
dynamic pages or if it is then it won't be meaningful.

Even when there is a "Last-Modified" date from the web-server, the date is
the date of the file at the server and this is likely to be slightly more
recent than when the webmaster modified the page. The reason is that pages
are typically transferred to a webserver by FTP and FTP does not preserve
date stamps, it creates files with the datestamp that reflects when the file
was copied up. So if the webmaster is using an unintelligent FTP program and
simply copies everything up to the server then the date simply reflects when
the webmaster last pushed the upload button and not when the file was last
modified.

Hope this helps.
--
Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian

The word "date" has different meanings:

1. month, year, etc.;

2. social event...usually on a Friday and/or Saturday night; and

3. fruit (I think.

I was writing about the first.

Barry Karas

"PD43" <pauld1943@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:frp524tf94bv91nd1cg0sgim53hmpd0te3@4ax.com...

Barry Karas wrote:

So, does the suggestions by either me and_or Brian work for your
purpose?



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