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To make Urlwatch track text rather than changing page markup, add a filter pipeline to the job in urls.yaml. Convert the HTML with html2text, optionally keep only matching lines with grep, and clean surrounding whitespace with strip. Then preview the result with urlwatch --test-filter before relying on the alerts.
Configure a Urlwatch job to compare page text
Urlwatch applies a job’s filters to newly retrieved content and compares the filtered result with the previously retrieved version. The filter pipeline therefore determines which changes count. A basic job looks like this:
name: "Watch page text"
url: "https://example.com/page"
filter:
- html2text
- grep: "Text I care about"
- stripReplace the example URL and text with values appropriate for the page. The grep filter keeps matching lines; use it only when the text of interest has a stable label or pattern. Remove that line if you want Urlwatch to compare all converted page text.
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Choose filters for the content you want to monitor
Convert the page to readable text
html2text converts HTML to plaintext, reducing noise from markup. Use it when the content is present in the HTTP response and you want a text-based comparison.
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Isolate one part of the page
If the desired copy sits inside a stable page element, select that element before converting it:
filter:
- css: "main article"
- html2text
- stripmain article is only an example selector. Inspect the target page’s markup and replace it with a selector that matches the relevant region. Urlwatch also documents XPath and built-in element filters for selecting HTML. Selecting a region first helps exclude unrelated page areas such as navigation or footers.
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Keep matching lines or normalize whitespace
grepretains lines that match its expression, which is useful for a stable text label or pattern.stripremoves leading and trailing whitespace.- Other documented text filters include
sortandstriplines; apply them only if their behavior fits the content you need to compare.
Install, edit, and validate the job
- Install Urlwatch and run it once. Use
urlwatch --editto create or edit the job list. - Add the job’s
urlandfilterlist tourls.yaml. Ordinary HTTP retrieval is the simplest option when the server response contains the target content. - Preview the filtered output with
urlwatch --test-filter <job-index-or-url>. Check that it contains the exact text you want Urlwatch to compare, then adjust the filters if necessary. - Run Urlwatch on a schedule that suits the page. The checking interval is determined by how often you invoke it; Urlwatch’s introduction recommends checking no more often than every 30 minutes.
Handle pages that need browser rendering
A direct URL job may not contain the text you expect if the page inserts it with JavaScript after loading. In that case, investigate a browser/navigation job or look for an underlying API that provides the content. The right approach depends on how that particular site serves its page.
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Urlwatch applies filters to newly retrieved content. Content already stored for comparison was processed using the previous filter settings. After you change a pipeline, the next comparison can therefore be between newly filtered output and previously stored output produced by the old pipeline. Preview with --test-filter and interpret the first post-change difference accordingly.
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Troubleshoot unexpected changes or missing text
- The output still contains layout or unrelated text: select a narrower CSS, XPath, or built-in element target before
html2text, then preview the result. - The text you care about disappears: check whether the selector matches the actual markup and whether the
grepexpression matches a line in the converted text. Temporarily removegrepto inspect the full text output. - The target is absent from a direct URL job: the page may render it with JavaScript. Try a browser/navigation job or find an underlying API.
- A filter edit triggers an unexpected diff: remember that stored content may reflect the old filter pipeline; inspect the test-filter output and treat the next comparison as a transition.
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