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There are many free/freemium webservices that send an e-mail notification whenever the content of a certain web page changes; e.g., visualping.io, changedetection.com, onwebchange...

Unfortunately the page I wish to track is the result of a search which is sent using a form via POST. It is a pure search without side effects, so I think that GET should have been used in this case, but it is an external website and I am stuck with it.

Is there a free webservice that can monitor the result of a POST query and send me an e-mail upon changes? Or a software/script that I can host myself? Linux is preferred, in this case.

Thanks!

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  • "using a form via POST. It is a pure search without side effects". Side not, this should be GET. Some people use POST for read operations when they want to "hide" the parameters from casual observers. Such people are doing things wrongly.
    – Mawg
    Commented Nov 1 at 9:04

4 Answers 4

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The free web service https://changemon.com/ has this ability. You can do POST requests to the specified URL by adding a GET-like string to the changemon’s URL field beginning with ?postdata=:

https://website.com/seach?postdata=parameter1:value1,parameter2:value2

See 'Posting data' under 'Tips & Tricks' at their homepage.

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    I'm surprised this is the accepted answer, as it doesn't appear to be a free service. Maybe it was free in 2018?
    – Amazon Dies In Darkness ♦
    Commented Oct 31 at 10:45
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  1. Check whether GET works. Many websites handle GET and POST requests to the same address equally. You can try this easily by changing the method of the form method from POST to GET and see if that brings the results with the new URL.
  2. Use your own software. Sending POST requests is usually not supported by web services because it might be used for malicious purposes, e.g. sending spam. Also many web pages prevent repeated form submissions by using CSRF tokens (which require re-loading the web page that hosts the form). The most popular software with this capability seems to be Web Alert, a free app for Android (however, I do not think that it can send email notifications yet).

I hope that helps you :-)

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    Thanks - changing the method manually to GET works. Nice trick!
    – Federico Poloni
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 17:30
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Just adding to the list of options - www.trackapage.com . It's free, and keeps an archive of historic screenshots as well.

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    Can you expand a little on how it does fulfull the question?
    – Alejandro
    Commented Nov 1, 2019 at 12:31
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https://github.com/dgtlmoon/changedetection.io / changedetection.io will do just that , here is a screenshot showing where to setup the option to track changes on a webpage that uses POST

the https://changedetection.io is 100% opensource so you can just grab it from the github link and give it a try

Track changes on a webpage that uses POST - How to setup

Then from there simply setup the notifications for email, discord etc

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    Our community has a strict anti-spam policy with a requirement that you fully disclose, preferably in bold at the top of your answer, your affiliation with any software or service you recommend. Please do so.
    – Amazon Dies In Darkness ♦
    Commented Oct 31 at 10:41

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