NAME
webcheck - website link checker
SYNOPSIS
webcheck [OPTION]... URL
DESCRIPTION
webcheck will check the document at the specified URL for links to
other documents, follow these links recursively and generate an HTML
report.
-i, --internal=PATTERN
Mark URLs matching the PATTERN (perl-type regular expression) as
an internal link. Can be used multiple times. Note that the
PATTERN is matched against the full URL. URLs matching this
PATTERN will be considered internal, even if they match one of
the --external PATTERNs.
-x, --external=PATTERN
Mark URLs matching the PATTERN (perl-type regular expression) as
an external link. Can be used multiple times. Note that the
PATTERN is matched against the full URL.
-y, --yank=PATTERN
Do not check URLs matching the PATTERN (perl-type regular
expression). Like the -x flag, though this option will cause
webcheck to not check the link matched by regex whereas -x will
check the link but not its children. Can be used multiple
times. Note that the PATTERN is matched against the full URL.
-b, --base-only
Consider any URL not starting with the base URL to be external.
For example, if you run
webcheck -b http://www.example.com/foo
then http://www.example.com/foo/bar will be considered internal
whereas http://www.example.com/ will be considered external. By
default all the pages on the site will be considered internal.
-a, --avoid-external
Avoid external links. Normally if webcheck is examining an HTML
page and it finds a link that points to an external document, it
will check to see if that external document exists. This flag
disables that action.
--ignore-robots
Do not retrieve and parse robots.txt files. By default
robots.txt files are retrieved and honored. If you are sure you
want to ignore and override the webmaster’s decision this option
can be used.
For more information on robots.txt handling see the NOTES
section below.
-q, --quiet, --silent
Do not print out progress as webcheck traverses a site.
-d, --debug
Print debugging information while crawling the site. This
option is mainly useful for developers.
-o, --output=DIRECTORY
Output directory. Use to specify the directory where webcheck
will dump its reports. The default is the current directory or
as specified by config.py. If this directory does not exist it
will be created for you (if possible).
-c, --continue
Try to continue from a previous run. When using this option
webcheck will look for a webcheck.dat in the output directory.
This file is read to restore the state from the previous run.
This allows webcheck to continue a previously interrupted run.
When this option is used, the --internal, --external and --yank
options will be ignored as well as any URL arguments. The
--base-only and --avoid-external options should be the same as
the previous run.
Note that this option is experimental and it’s semantics may
change with coming releases (especially in relation to other
options). Also note that the stored files are not guaranteed to
be compatible between releases.
-f, --force
Overwrite files without asking. This option is required for
running webcheck non-interactively.
-r, --redirects=N
Redirect depth. the number of redirects webcheck should follow
when following a link. 0 implies to follow all redirects.
-u, --userpass=URL
Specify a URL with username and password information to use for
basic authentication when visiting the site.
e.g. http://test:secret@example.com/
This option may be specified multiple times.
-w, --wait=SECONDS
Wait SECONDS between document retrievals. Usually webcheck will
process a url and immediately move on to the next. However on
some loaded systems it may be desirable to have webcheck pause
between requests. This option can be set to any non-negative
number.
-v, --version
Show version of program.
-h, --help
Show short summary of options.
URL CLASSES
URLs are divided into two classes:
Internal URLs are retrieved and the retrieved item is checked for
syntax. Also, the retrieved item is searched for links to other items
(of any class) and these links are followed.
External URLs are only retrieved to test whether they are valid and to
gather some basic information from them (title, size, content-type,
etc). The retrieved items are not inspected for links to other items.
Apart from their class, URLs can also be considered yanked (as
specified with the --yank or --avoid-external options). The URLs can
be either internal or external and will not be retrieved or checked at
all. URLs of unsupported schemes are also considered yanked.
EXAMPLES
Check the site www.example.com but consider any path with "/webcheck"
in it to be external.
webcheck http://www.example.com/ -x /webcheck
NOTES
When checking internal URLs webcheck honors the robots.txt file,
identifying itself as user-agent webcheck. Disallowed links will not be
checked at all as if the -y option was specified for that URL. To allow
webcheck to crawl parts of a site that other robots are disallowed, use
something like:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /foo
User-agent: webcheck
Allow: /foo
ENVIRONMENT
<scheme>_proxy
Proxy url for <scheme>.
REPORTING BUGS
Bug reports shoult be sent to the current maintainer
<arthur@ch.tudelft.nl>. More information on reporting bugs can be
found on the webcheck homepage:
http://ch.tudelft.nl/~arthur/webcheck/
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 1998, 1999 Albert Hopkins (marduk)
Copyright © 2002 Mike W. Meyer
Copyright © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Arthur de Jong
webcheck is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
The files produced as output from the software do not automatically
fall under the copyright of the software, unless explicitly stated
otherwise.