Reg Expression on Javascript?

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a tough one here that is not working. I need to get the date and time of a web page update. Here is how it looks on the web page(Date and time changes everyday)

Page last updated:
Wednesday, May 08, 2002 14:53:02

Here is how it looks in my browser View/page source:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
document.write("<font face=arial size=1>Page last updated:
 " + "<br>" + document.lastMod<FONT face=arial size=1>
Page last updated: <BR>Wednesday, May 08, 2002 14:53:02
[download]

Now I have tried every reg expression combination:

(/Page last updated: \<BR\>(.*)$/)
(/Page last updated: \<BR\>(.*)$/)
(/Page last updated: <BR>(.*)$/)
[download]

As an example:

$content = get($url);
print $content;

my ($dat) = $content =~  (/Page last updated: <BR>(.*$)/i);
print "$1\n";
print $dat;
[download]

Nothing prints. I can not fetch the date and time. If I print out the $content = get($url variable and get the whole web page HTML code the date and time DO NOT show up. Please advise if this date and time part are in a javascript then it is not accessible??

Comment on Reg Expression on Javascript? Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Reg Expression on Javascript? by cLive ;-) (Prior) on May 09, 2002 at 12:19 UTC
Think about it!!! How does JavaScript work? browser requests HTML HTML is parsed by browder browser executes javascript And what is LWP doing? LWP requests HTML sigh cLive ;-) ps - but in answer to your question, perhaps reading the LWP::Simple docs might help (hint - look at the head() function) -- seek(JOB,$$LA,0);	[reply]
Re: Reg Expression on Javascript? by tachyon (Chancellor) on May 09, 2002 at 12:57 UTC
Do it the easy way.... `use LWP::Simple; $data = head('http://www.somesite.com'); print $data->{'_headers'}->{'last-modified'}; # this shows you the available data in the header use Data::Dumper; print "\n\n", Dumper $data;` [download] cheers tachyon s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Parsing HTML source that contains JavaScript by mrbbking (Hermit) on May 09, 2002 at 12:16 UTC
JavaScript is interpreted and executed by your web browser. When you use Perl to get the same page, you just get the text of the page - there is no provision to execute any JavaScript that the page might contain. You noticed that `print $content;` does not show you the date and time, only the JavaScript that would have produced it, had it been executed. That's why you can't find it ... it's not there...	[reply]
Re: Reg Expression on Javascript? by perlplexer (Hermit) on May 09, 2002 at 12:10 UTC
Perhaps there aren't as many spaces after the ':' as you expect? Do this: `/page last updated:\s<br>(.)/i;` [download] --perlplexer Update: Forgot `<br>` Update: Err, never mind... I think I should've gotten some coffee before answering that. :) Read all the replies below.	[reply] [d/l] [select]