Chronological Date

[Guest Barry Karas]

8/May/2008 6:50

 

This was asked before to no avail.

 

Other than the creation date that is printed on a webpage by the developer,

is there a way to determine the chronological date of a webpage?

 

Sincerely,

 

Barry Karas

[Guest PD43]

Re: Chronological Date

 

"Barry Karas" <barrykaras1234@comcast.net> wrote:

>Other than the creation date that is printed on a webpage by the developer,

>is there a way to determine the chronological date of a webpage?

 

Translate please. I've not had my morning coffee yet.

[Guest Malke]

Re: Chronological Date

 

Barry Karas wrote:

> 8/May/2008 6:50

>

> This was asked before to no avail.

>

> Other than the creation date that is printed on a webpage by the

> developer, is there a way to determine the chronological date of a

> webpage?

 

It was asked before and *answered* before. At length. Apparently you just

didn't like the answers. This doesn't change them, however. The only way to

determine a chronological date of a webpage that is not under your direct

control (eg., your very own webpage that you created yourself) is if the

webpage creator puts something to that effect on the page such as a change

log or the like.

 

So I suppose you could say you previously asked "to no avail" but "and I

didn't get the answer I wanted to hear so I'm asking the same thing again"

more accurately depicts what you are doing.

 

Malke

--

MS-MVP

Elephant Boy Computers

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com

Don't Panic!

[Guest Malke]

Re: Chronological Date

 

.... et al. wrote:

> That is something queried and answered with the HTTP. So you need

> a program that uses this and lets you see the answers.

>

> For your ordinary web-browsers;

>

> 'Firefox' lets you see this via 'about:cache'

>

> 'Internet Explorer' lists this as one of the columns in the

> 'Temporary Internet Files' pseudo-directory.

>

> 'Opera', i'm not familiar with how to do it there.

 

That only shows you when the page was accessed. The OP wants to know when

the page was *created* or *updated* by the website owner.

 

Malke

--

MS-MVP

Elephant Boy Computers

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com

Don't Panic!

[Guest ... et al.]

Re: Chronological Date

 

Barry Karas wrote:

> 8/May/2008 6:50

>

> This was asked before to no avail.

>

> Other than the creation date that is printed on a webpage by the developer,

> is there a way to determine the chronological date of a webpage?

 

That is something queried and answered with the HTTP. So you need

a program that uses this and lets you see the answers.

 

For your ordinary web-browsers;

 

'Firefox' lets you see this via 'about:cache'

 

'Internet Explorer' lists this as one of the columns in the

'Temporary Internet Files' pseudo-directory.

 

'Opera', i'm not familiar with how to do it there.

 

 

 

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[Guest ... et al.]

Re: Chronological Date

 

Malke wrote:

> ... et al. wrote:

>

>> That is something queried and answered with the HTTP. So you need

>> a program that uses this and lets you see the answers.

>>

>> For your ordinary web-browsers;

>>

>> 'Firefox' lets you see this via 'about:cache'

>>

>> 'Internet Explorer' lists this as one of the columns in the

>> 'Temporary Internet Files' pseudo-directory.

>>

>> 'Opera', i'm not familiar with how to do it there.

>

> That only shows you when the page was accessed. The OP wants to know when

> the page was *created* or *updated* by the website owner.

 

If you are talking about the {Internet Explorers/Windows

Explorers} TIF pseudo-folder, mine shows different columns for

'Last Modified' and 'Last Accessed' as well as another one for

'Last Checked'. As i remember it 'Last Modified' values can show

realistic dates like 2005, 2002 for web-pages that hasn't been

updated since these dates.

 

 

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[Guest Malke]

Re: Chronological Date

 

.... et al. wrote:

> If you are talking about the {Internet Explorers/Windows

> Explorers} TIF pseudo-folder, mine shows different columns for

> 'Last Modified' and 'Last Accessed' as well as another one for

> 'Last Checked'. As i remember it 'Last Modified' values can show

> realistic dates like 2005, 2002 for web-pages that hasn't been

> updated since these dates.

 

No, for the last time: the OP had a different thread where he asked the same

question. What he wants to know is a way to tell when the *content* of a

webpage has been updated. He wants to know if a website was last worked on

by the website owner in 1998 or last week. So no, we aren't talking about

anything available on the local computer because what the OP wants is not

possible unless the person who wrote the webpage puts that information on

it.

 

EOT for me.

 

Malke

--

MS-MVP

Elephant Boy Computers

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com

Don't Panic!

[Guest ... et al.]

Re: Chronological Date

 

Malke wrote:

> ... et al. wrote:

>

>> If you are talking about the {Internet Explorers/Windows

>> Explorers} TIF pseudo-folder, mine shows different columns for

>> 'Last Modified' and 'Last Accessed' as well as another one for

>> 'Last Checked'. As i remember it 'Last Modified' values can show

>> realistic dates like 2005, 2002 for web-pages that hasn't been

>> updated since these dates.

>

> No, for the last time: the OP had a different thread where he asked the same

> question. What he wants to know is a way to tell when the *content* of a

> webpage has been updated. He wants to know if a website was last worked on

> by the website owner in 1998 or last week. So no, we aren't talking about

> anything available on the local computer because what the OP wants is not

> possible unless the person who wrote the webpage puts that information on

> it.

 

Yes, it is possible .. by looking at the HTTP communication:

 

RFC2616 "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1"

<http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt>

 

 

14.29 Last-Modified

 

The Last-Modified entity-header field indicates the date and

time at which the origin server believes the variant was last

modified.

 

[snip]

 

HTTP/1.1 servers SHOULD send Last-Modified whenever feasible.

 

 

 

So the web-client (browser) doesn't explicitly query for the last

modified date but a web-server *should* include that value in the

response, and from what i have seen usually does.

 

However, i just checked the 'about:cache' in Firefox after going

to a web-site i made and put out on the web and that i haven't

updated in a few years. Unfortunately the 'Last modified' line

there shows todays date, in other words it is more the 'current

access date' then the last modified one, so i was wrong to state

that that is the place to look it up.

 

> EOT for me.

>

> Malke

 

Fine. you are just plain wrong that it isn't something the OP can

get to know. The OP just need to use a tool that shows the

web-servers HTTP response for a web-page or other whatever

resource he 'GET's.

 

 

--

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[Guest ... et al.]

Re: Chronological Date

 

.... et al. wrote:

>

> However, i just checked the 'about:cache' in Firefox after going to a

> web-site i made and put out on the web and that i haven't updated in a

> few years. Unfortunately the 'Last modified' line there shows todays

> date, in other words it is more the 'current access date' then the last

> modified one, so i was wrong to state that that is the place to look it up.

 

Ahh, yes this is how i see it in Firefox:

 

Request a web-page.

From the menu choose 'Tools' : 'Page Info'

On the 'General' tab look at the 'Modified' date given.

 

For the homepage on the above mentioned site i see:

Modified: 28 June 2005 12:52:11

 

I really should start thinking about updating it. :-)

 

I must say i was taken aback by what the 'about:cache' page shows

.... ahh, but now i remember, i have to click just one link

further and i'll get to see the HTTP-server response:

 

Client: HTTP

 

request-method: GET

 

request-Host: (http://www.server.com) <- modified

 

response-head: HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 03:01:30 GMT

Server: Apache/1.3.32

Vary: Host

Last-Modified: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 11:52:11 GMT

Etag: ("nnnnnnn-nnnn-nnnnnnnn") <- modified

Accept-Ranges: bytes

Content-Length: 4329

Content-Type: text/html

 

charset: ISO-8859-1

 

 

Easy as pie.

Down to the second man! Well one hour on or off.

 

 

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[Guest Brian Cryer]

Re: Chronological Date

 

"Barry Karas" <barrykaras1234@comcast.net> wrote in message

news:_ZydnbCkt7iTRr_VnZ2dnUVZ_tDinZ2d@comcast.com...

> 8/May/2008 6:50

>

> This was asked before to no avail.

>

> Other than the creation date that is printed on a webpage by the

> developer, is there a way to determine the chronological date of a

> webpage?

 

Firstly, the date shown on a webpage is either fake or a waste of time. Some

sites generate the date on demand, so its always today or very recent. If

the date is genuine then all it shows is if the web page hasn't been updated

for a while. As a web developer it isn't something I ever put on a page.

 

Secondly, this isn't really an xp question, so it might have been better

asked in a webmaster newsgroup such as alt.http://www.webmaster.

 

As to whether you can determine the chronological date of a webpage this

depends on the type of page and I suppose in part on the web-server. If the

page is dynamically generated (so say a .asp, .aspx, .php, .pl etc) then

other than downloading the page and comparing it with a previous version I

don't think there is any way. If the page is static html (so .htm or .html)

then you can query the server for the age of the file. For example if you

use CryPing (free from http://www.cryer.co.uk/downloads/cryping/) then you

can view the heads returned for a page, so:

 

C:\>cryping -v -n 1 -http http://www.cryer.co.uk

CryPing - from http://www.cryer.co.uk v1.3 (build April 2008)

Pinging http://www.cryer.co.uk for http status:

 

Reply from http://www.cryer.co.uk: 200 OK time=67ms

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 10:46:07 GMT

Server: Apache/1.3.39 (Debian)

Vary: Host

Last-Modified: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:40:40 GMT

ETag: "6ce6870-2350-4808eb28"

Accept-Ranges: bytes

Content-Length: 9040

Connection: close

Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

 

and the "Last-Modified" shows you when the page was last changed, in this

case in April of this year. However I don't know whether all servers return

"Last-Modified", and as I indicated above it probably won't be included for

dynamic pages or if it is then it won't be meaningful.

 

Even when there is a "Last-Modified" date from the web-server, the date is

the date of the file at the server and this is likely to be slightly more

recent than when the webmaster modified the page. The reason is that pages

are typically transferred to a webserver by FTP and FTP does not preserve

date stamps, it creates files with the datestamp that reflects when the file

was copied up. So if the webmaster is using an unintelligent FTP program and

simply copies everything up to the server then the date simply reflects when

the webmaster last pushed the upload button and not when the file was last

modified.

 

Hope this helps.

--

Brian Cryer

http://www.cryer.co.uk/brian

[Guest Barry Karas]

Re: Chronological Date

 

The word "date" has different meanings:

 

1. month, year, etc.;

 

2. social event...usually on a Friday and/or Saturday night; and

 

3. fruit (I think.

 

I was writing about the first.

 

Barry Karas

 

"PD43" <pauld1943@comcast.net> wrote in message

news:frp524tf94bv91nd1cg0sgim53hmpd0te3@4ax.com...

> "Barry Karas" <barrykaras1234@comcast.net> wrote:

>

>>Other than the creation date that is printed on a webpage by the

>>developer,

>>is there a way to determine the chronological date of a webpage?

>

> Translate please. I've not had my morning coffee yet.

[Guest ... et al.]

Re: Chronological Date

 

Barry Karas wrote:

> The word "date" has different meanings:

>

> 1. month, year, etc.;

>

> 2. social event...usually on a Friday and/or Saturday night; and

>

> 3. fruit (I think.

>

> I was writing about the first.

>

 

So, does the suggestions by either me and_or Brian work for your

purpose?

 

>> "Barry Karas" <barrykaras1234@comcast.net> wrote:

>>

>>> Other than the creation date that is printed on a webpage by the

>>> developer,

>>> is there a way to determine the chronological date of a webpage?

 

 

--

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