Check URL --> Simply?

[Tom Bryan]

JS wrote:

> Is there anything that works like this?
> 
> checkLink(url):
>      # If url exists, return 1
>      # If url does not exist, return 0
> 
> All I want to do is check the external links in a html file and log if
> they exist or not. Unfortunately, I am not skilled enough to write
> something myself.

You may also find it interesting to look in the Tools directory of your 
Python (source) installation.

$ cat /usr/local/Python-2.1.1/Tools/webchecker/README
Webchecker
----------
 
This is a simple web tree checker, useful to find bad links in a web
tree.  It currently checks links pointing within the same subweb for
validity.  The main program is "webchecker.py".  See its doc string
(or invoke it with the option "-?") for more defails.
 
History:
 
- Jan 1997.  First release.  The module robotparser.py was written by
Skip Montanaro; the rest is original work by Guido van Rossum.
 
- May 1999.  Sam Bayer contributed a new version, wcnew.py, which
supports checking internal links (#spam fragments in URLs) and some
other options.
 
- Nov 1999.  Sam Bayer contributed patches to reintegrate wcnew.py
into webchecker.py, and corresponding mods to wcgui.py and
websucker.py.