[Vit-discuss] content refreshness or lack of [was Brainstorming]

Thu Feb 24 07:32:35 EST 2005

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, James Britt wrote:

> I recall having assorted problems getting rubyxml.com to correctly
> show up on the list whenever I added new content.  After a while I
> just forgot about it.

There are problems:  Apache doesn't seem to produce a Last-Modified
Header

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.29

and I can't figure out how to enable it.  There are things to do so
with mod_perl, and for active pages, but there seems tobe nothing in
the core to do it.  As a result things don't get sorted correctly.

However, the stuff below may be of some use to someone. Yes, it
could be improved, but it does enough for me now.

         Hugh

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
     <head>
         <title>List of active Ruby Sites</title>
     </head>
     <body>
         <h1>List of active Ruby Sites</h1>
         <%
         require 'net/http'
         require 'uri'
         require 'date'

         # Get a list of sites to process
         class Site
            attr_accessor :url, :name, :date, :failed
            def initialize(url, name)
               @url = url; @name = name;
               @date = DateTime.now;
               @failed = false
            end
         end
         Sites = [Site.new('http://www.ruby-lang.org/', 'www.ruby-lang.org/'),
                 Site.new('http://redhanded.hobix.com/', 'Redhanded'),
                 Site.new('http://www.ruby-doc.org/', 'Ruby-doc'),
                 Site.new('http://www.rubyquiz.com/', 'Ruby Quiz'),
                 Site.new('http://rubyforge.org/', 'RubyForge'),
                 Site.new('http://rubyxml.com/', 'Ruby XML'),
                 Site.new('http://raa.ruby-lang.org/', 'Ruby
                 Application Archive'),
                 Site.new('http://www.rubygarden.org/', 'RubyGarden')]
         Sites.each {|site|
             uri = URI.parse(site.url)
             host = uri.host
             port = uri.port
             path = uri.path
             begin
                 Net::HTTP.start(host, port) {|http|
                     response = http.request_head(path)
                     if response.key?('last-modified')
                         site.date = DateTime.parse(response['last-modified'])
                     else
                        site.date = DateTime.civil(1970)
                     end
                 }
             rescue
                 site.failed = true
             end
         }
         %>
         <p>Note, Dates of 1970 mean the server doesn't provide a
         Last-Modified: header.</p>
         <ul><% Sites.sort_by{|x| x.date}.reverse.each{|site|
             unless site.failed
             %>
             <li><a href="<%= site.url %>"><%= site.name %> ...
                 [<%= site.date.to_s %>]</a></li>
             <% else %>
             <li> Could not access <a href="<%= site.url %>"><%=
             site.name %> </li>
             <% end %>
             <% } %></ul>
         <p>Page generated <%= DateTime.now %> with erb </p>
     </body>
</html>