This is a fork of https://github.com/yubiuser/webchanges-docker/ to allow for the use of use_browser which requires a larger docker image to support running chrome.

This repo provides a docker image based on Debian for running webchanges. The full python eco system is installed and avaliable for use with hooks, differ commands, etc.

The following optional dependencies of webchanges are included (see Dependencies)

1. add URLs to data/jobs.yaml (take a look at the Jobs section in the webchanges documentation for all details)
2. setup data/config.yaml as required and configure at least one reporter (e.g. SMTP account details)
3. run webchanges:

docker-compose up -d

# watch log output
docker-compose logs -f

# stop webchanges
docker-compose down

If you don't want to use Docker Compose, you can run the container with Docker:

# run once
docker run --rm --interactive --tty \
    --volume "$(pwd)/data":/data/webchanges \
    --volume /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro \
    ghcr.io/jhedlund/webchanges

# run in background and restart automatically
docker run --tty --detach --restart unless-stopped \
    --name webchanges \
    --volume "$(pwd)/data":/data/webchanges \
    --volume /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro \
    ghcr.io/jhedlund/webchanges

# watch log output
docker logs --follow webchanges

webchanges runs once every 15 minutes with the provided default settings. It's possible to adjust that interval by editing the provided crontabfile file and mount in into the container.

crontabfile commands redirect all output to rsyslogd.

For running every hour instead of the default 15 minutes, change crontabfile as following:

0 * * * * cd /data/webchanges && webchanges --urls jobs.yaml --config config.yaml --database snapshots.db 2>&1 | /usr/bin/logger -t webchanges

Addtionally, each day at 08:00 webchanges --error runs to check the jobs for errors or empty data.

Tip: use crontabguru to change the cron intervals.

Mount crontabfile into the container:

docker-compose run --rm --volume "$(pwd)/crontabfile:/crontabfile:ro" --volume "$(pwd):/data" --volume /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro webchanges

or add the mount to docker-compose.yml:

networks:
  webchanges:

services:
  webchanges:
    image: ghcr.io/jhedlund/webchanges:latest
    container_name: webchanges
    volumes:
      - ./crontabfile:/crontabfile:ro
      - ./data:/data/webchanges
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    restart: "unless-stopped"
    networks:
      - webchangess

If you are migrating from a version of webchanges before v3.22, you need to migrate your crontabfile to the new format. This can be done by changing all occurrences of

--cache cache.db

to

--database snapshots.db

in the crontabfile.

You can use

docker compose exec webchanges /bin/bash
cd /data/webchanges

and then

su -c 'webchanges --urls jobs.yaml --config config.yaml --database snapshots.db --list' webchanges

to get a list of all configured filters including the ID of each entry, e.g.,

List of jobs:
  1: A news (https://www.a.com/news)
  2: B changelog (https://www.b.com/changelog)
  ...

These IDs can then be used to actually test the filters, e.g.,

su-c 'webchanges --urls jobs.yaml --config config.yaml --database snapshots.db --test 2' webchanges

for testing rule 2 (B changelog). This is very helpful for debugging existing filters (e.g., on format changes on a page), and for creating new filters where the particular filtering options are not yet clear.

To update the container to the latest version, pull the image from the registry and restart the container:

docker-compose pull
docker-compose up -d

• clone repository: git clone [email protected]:jhedlund/webchanges-docker.git
• adjust interval in crontab if needed (webchanges is started every 15 minutes with the provided default)
• build the image and run webchanges