Subject: Re: Webpage.alert Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 16:48:38 -0400 (EDT) From: Ed Ravin To: andy.ciordia@goingv.com (Andy Ciordia) CC: mon@linux.kernel.org Andy Ciordia writes: [web paging scripts] > I can whip one of these up but if someone has already created the wheel > for talking to lynx or some perl module to post a set of variables to a > web paging service could they make it available? Been there and done that, here's what I learned: * you don't want to use lynx - you can, but there's no easy way to tell if it worked properly unless you call it via expect or Comm.pl so you can do two-way interaction with it and see what its output is. For all that trouble, you might as well interface directly with the Web server. * not every ASCII character can be sent via a vendor's web page. Skytel loses % + &, for example, but thankfully they have an SNPP server so you can send your data that way. Bell Atlantic Mobile loses < and >, perhaps it'll work better once they're finished changing their name to Verizon :-p. * I would be moderately paranoid about stability of the paging company's web pages - when they decide to change their interface, your script will break. Maybe send a test page at noon once a month to make sure it's still working? Keep harassing the company until they supply an SNPP server, or switch to someone who does? The attached script, "pageomat", is an alpha version - it knows how to send the pages via either SNPP or the company's web page, if it's a company it knows about. To figure out how to send the page, I used lynx to surf to the company's web site, sent a page, and either sniffed the transaction via tcpdump or used Lynx's frame rendering (the \ command) and other debug options to figure out what was happening. If your company's not in there, you'll need to do the same, but it's fairly easy to add new info (it's all in a database). Comments, fixes, suggestions for improvement are welcome - send them to .