Subject: 
         Re: Webpage.alert
   Date: 
         Tue, 18 Jul 2000 16:48:38 -0400 (EDT)
   From: 
         Ed Ravin <eravin@panix.com>
     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
<eravin@panix.com>.