How to check webpage status using Perl
We have several web pages that we needs to be monitored from outside of our work network especially after a maintenance window. I didn't want to do this manually (ever again), so I wrote a Perl script to run on my Linux server (laptop) from home.This is the header portion. I imported these modules to be used by my script. Line 3 turns any expression that is deemed difficult to debug into error. And line 4 enabled optional warnings.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 | #!/usr/local/bin/perl ## to install modules, follow instruction from http://www.cpan.org/modules/INSTALL.html use strict; use warnings; use WWW::Mechanize; use HTTP::Cookies; use IO::Socket::SSL; use Email::Sender::Simple qw(sendmail); use Email::Sender::Transport::SMTPS (); use Email::Simple (); use Email::Simple::Creator (); use WWW::Wunderground::API; use Try::Tiny; binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'; # for degrees symbol |
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Below is to use Weather Underground API. You must obtain your own free API key to use.
1 2 3 4 5 | my $weather = new WWW::Wunderground::API( location => 'pws:XXXXXXXXXX', api_key => '1111111111111111', auto_api => 1, ); |
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In the below code, we paste Message of the Day to our email body and get a list of URLs from a file.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | ## For debugging purposes #my $outfile = "/home/me/Documents/perl/output.htm"; ## Message of day my $motd = `exec /usr/games/fortune | /usr/games/cowsay -n`; ## List of websites to check from outside my $filename = '/home/me/Documents/perl/serverlist.txt'; open(my $fh, '<:encoding(UTF-8)', $filename) or die "Could not open file '$filename' $!"; |
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Below is the main section used to loop through the list of URLs and check their status using a function call (last block of codes below). In line 10, we also use the WeatherUnderground API to get our temperature.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 | my $emailbody = "webpage status codes\n"; while (my $text = <$fh>) { chomp $text; $emailbody = $emailbody . "$text: "; my $answer = get_answer($text); $emailbody = $emailbody . "$answer\n"; } $emailbody = $emailbody . "$motd\n"; my $currentTemp = $weather->conditions->temp_f; my $cTempString = "Current Temperature is $currentTemp degrees"; $emailbody = $emailbody . "$cTempString\n"; ##For debugging purposes #print $emailbody; |
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The below block of code is to connect to my email service provider and send email to everyone in the address book.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 | ## Put SMTP authentication information here my $smtpserver = 'smtp.office365.com'; my $smtpport = 587; my $smtpuser = 'me@outlook.com'; my $smtppassword = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'; my $tousers=''; ## List of email addresses $filename = '/home/me/Documents/perl/addresses.txt'; open($fh, '<:encoding(UTF-8)', $filename) or die "Could not open file '$filename' $!"; while (my $row = <$fh>) { chomp $row; $tousers = $tousers . "$row,"; } $tousers = $tousers . "$smtpuser"; ##setup the email server connection here my $transport = Email::Sender::Transport::SMTPS->new({ host => $smtpserver, port => $smtpport, ssl => "starttls", sasl_username => $smtpuser, sasl_password => $smtppassword, }); ##create email object my $email = Email::Simple->create( header => [ To => $tousers, From => $smtpuser, Subject => 'Status', ], body => $emailbody, ); ##send the email sendmail($email, { transport => $transport }); |
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The below code is my function that does the actual website checking. Notice the Try-Catch blocks, this is useful for checking webpage status because if the website is unreachable it is a Catch event. Also line 2 shows how we obtain the parameter value for this function call. Be sure to wrap the variable around ().
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 | sub get_answer { my ($row) = @_; try{ chomp $row; ##print "$row\n"; my $mech=WWW::Mechanize->new(ssl_opts => { verify_hostname => 0, }); $mech->cookie_jar(HTTP::Cookies->new()); $mech->get($row); ##my $output_page = $mech->content(); my $output_status = $mech->status(); ##print $output_page; chomp $output_status; return $output_status; }catch{ my $output_status = "Fail"; return $output_status; }; } |
