24-Sep-2006: Update
I’ve added code that logs each alert to a local database so that 1) duplicate alerts aren’t sent, even if the the stories are posted days or weeks apart, and 2) you can easily check which alerts have been sent historically.
Feel free to download the new code or the old code and tell me what you think.
Additionally I added a debug mode such that if you run
> ./feedMonitor.py --console
the script prints to the console only and doesn’t send the email or log to the DB, so that you can see what types of alerts might be sent with the present script options.
Lastly, a simple PHP script can be used to display the alerts which have been sent in a HTML table that looks like this.
I recently wrote a Python script which monitors RSS feeds for user-specified keywords. The need for this script arose from the large number of security websites and mailing lists I monitor for work-related posts. And you know how big a fan of automation I am…
All you need to run this script is Python and a SMTP server to send messages. If you know of an open SMTP relay feel free to use that, but you may find it easier to simply install Sendmail locally. The script is configured by default to send messages to localhost, so if you’re going to go the open relay route, you’ll need to configure the script accordingly.
For now, it is probably best to set the script up to run as a cron job and have the script run automatically every 10-30 minutes or so, depending on how urgently you need the alerts to come. Eventually, I will add to the script the ability to log which alerts were mailed in a SQL database so that 1) you don’t receive duplicate alerts, and 2) you can have a record of which alerts have been mailed historically.
Stay tuned for updates to the script, and feel free to contact me if you have any questions.