Reporters¶

By default urlwatch prints out information about changes to standard output, which is your terminal if you run it interactively. If running via cron or another scheduler service, it depends on how the scheduler is configured.

You can enable one or more additional reporters that are used to send change notifications. Please note that most reporters need additional dependencies installed.

See Configuration on how to edit the configuration.

Built-in reporters¶

The list of built-in reporters can be retrieved using:

urlwatch --features

At the moment, the following reporters are built-in:

stdout: Print summary on stdout (the console)
email: Send summary via e-mail / SMTP
mailgun: Custom email reporter that uses Mailgun
matrix: Custom Matrix reporter
pushbullet: Send summary via pushbullet.com
pushover: Send summary via pushover.net
slack: Custom Slack reporter
telegram: Custom Telegram reporter
ifttt: Send summary via IFTTT

Pushover¶

You can configure urlwatch to send real time notifications about changes via Pushover. To enable this, ensure you have the chump python package installed (see Dependencies). Then edit your config (urlwatch --edit-config) and enable pushover. You will also need to add to the config your Pushover user key and a unique app key (generated by registering urlwatch as an application on your Pushover account.

You can send to a specific device by using the device name, as indicated when you add or view your list of devices in the Pushover console. For example device: 'MyPhone', or device: 'MyLaptop'. To send to all of your devices, set device: null in your config (urlwatch --edit-config) or leave out the device configuration completely.

Setting the priority is possible via the priority config option, which can be lowest, low, normal, high or emergency. Any other setting (including leaving the option unset) maps to normal.

Pushbullet¶

Pushbullet notifications are configured similarly to Pushover (see above). You’ll need to add to the config your Pushbullet Access Token, which you can generate at https://www.pushbullet.com/#settings

Telegram¶

Telegram notifications are configured using the Telegram Bot API. For this, you’ll need a Bot API token and a chat id (see https://core.telegram.org/bots). Sample configuration:

telegram:
  bot_token: '999999999:3tOhy2CuZE0pTaCtszRfKpnagOG8IQbP5gf' # your bot api token
  chat_id: '88888888' # the chat id where the messages should be sent
  enabled: true

To set up Telegram, from your Telegram app, chat up BotFather (New Message, Search, “BotFather”), then say /newbot and follow the instructions. Eventually it will tell you the bot token (in the form seen above, <number>:<random string>) - add this to your config file.

You can then click on the link of your bot, which will send the message /start. At this point, you can use the command urlwatch --telegram-chats to list the private chats the bot is involved with. This is the chat ID that you need to put into the config file as chat_id. You may add multiple chat IDs as a YAML list:

telegram:
  bot_token: '999999999:3tOhy2CuZE0pTaCtszRfKpnagOG8IQbP5gf' # your bot api token
  chat_id:
    - '11111111'
    - '22222222'
  enabled: true

Don’t forget to also enable the reporter.

Slack¶

Slack notifications are configured using “Slack Incoming Webhooks”. Here is a sample configuration:

slack:
  webhook_url: 'https://hooks.slack.com/services/T50TXXXXXU/BDVYYYYYYY/PWTqwyFM7CcCfGnNzdyDYZ'
  enabled: true

To set up Slack, from you Slack Team, create a new app and activate “Incoming Webhooks” on a channel, you’ll get a webhook URL, copy it into the configuration as seen above.

You can use the command urlwatch --test-slack to test if the Slack integration works.

IFTTT¶

To configure IFTTT events, you need to retrieve your key from here:

https://ifttt.com/maker_webhooks/settings

The URL shown in “Account Info” has the following format:

https://maker.ifttt.com/use/{key}

In this URL, {key} is your API key. The configuration should look like this (you can pick any event name you want):

ifttt:
  enabled: true
  key: aA12abC3D456efgHIjkl7m
  event: event_name_you_want

The event will contain three values in the posted JSON:

value1: The type of change (new, changed, unchanged or error)
value2: The name of the job (name key in jobs.yaml)
value3: The location of the job (url, command or navigate key in jobs.yaml)

These values will be passed on to the Action in your Recipe.

Matrix¶

You can have notifications sent to you through the Matrix protocol.

To achieve this, you first need to register a Matrix account for the bot on any homeserver.

You then need to acquire an access token and room ID, using the following instructions adapted from this guide:

Open Riot.im in a private browsing window
Register/Log in as your bot, using its user ID and password.
Set the display name and avatar, if desired.
In the settings page, select the “Help & About” tab, scroll down to the bottom and click Access Token: <click to reveal>.
Copy the highlighted text to your configuration.
Join the room that you wish to send notifications to.
Go to the Room Settings (gear icon) and copy the Internal Room ID from the bottom.
Close the private browsing window but do not log out, as this invalidates the Access Token.

Here is a sample configuration:

matrix:
  homeserver: https://matrix.org
  access_token: "YOUR_TOKEN_HERE"
  room_id: "!roomroomroom:matrix.org"
  enabled: true

You will probably want to use the following configuration for the markdown reporter, if you intend to post change notifications to a public Matrix room, as the messages quickly become noisy:

markdown:
  details: false
  footer: false
  minimal: true
  enabled: true

E-Mail via GMail SMTP¶

You need to configure your GMail account to allow for “less secure” (password-based) apps to login:

Go to https://myaccount.google.com/
Click on “Sign-in & security”
Scroll all the way down to “Allow less secure apps” and enable it

You do not want to do this with your primary GMail account, but rather on a separate account that you create just for sending mails via urlwatch. Allowing less secure apps and storing the password (even if it’s in the keychain) is not good security practice for your primary account.

Now, start the configuration editor: urlwatch --edit-config

These are the keys you need to configure:

report/email/enabled: true
report/email/from: your.username@gmail.com (edit accordingly)
report/email/method: smtp
report/email/smtp/host: smtp.gmail.com
report/email/smtp/auth: true
report/email/smtp/port: 587
report/email/smtp/starttls: true
report/email/to: The e-mail address you want to send reports to

Now, for setting the password, it’s not stored in the config file, but in your keychain. To store the password, run: urlwatch --smtp-login and enter your password.

E-Mail via Amazon Simple E-Mail Service (SES)¶

Start the configuration editor: urlwatch --edit-config

These are the keys you need to configure:

report/email/enabled: true
report/email/from: you@verified_domain.com (edit accordingly)
report/email/method: smtp
report/email/smtp/host: email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com (edit accordingly)
report/email/smtp/user: ABCDEFGHIJ1234567890 (edit accordingly)
report/email/smtp/auth: true
report/email/smtp/port: 587 (25 or 465 also work)
report/email/smtp/starttls: true
report/email/to: The e-mail address you want to send reports to

The password is not stored in the config file, but in your keychain. To store the password, run: urlwatch --smtp-login and enter your password.

SMTP login without keyring¶

If for whatever reason you cannot use a keyring to store your password (for example, when using it from a cron job) you can also set the insecure_password option in the SMTP config:

report/email/smtp/auth: true
report/email/smtp/insecure_password: secret123

The insecure_password key will be preferred over the data stored in the keyring. Please note that as the name says, storing the password as plaintext in the configuration is insecure and bad practice, but for an e-mail account that’s only dedicated for sending mails this might be a way. Never ever use this with your your primary e-mail account! Seriously! Create a throw-away GMail (or other) account just for sending out those e-mails or use local sendmail with a mail server configured instead of relying on SMTP and password auth.

Note that this makes it really easy for your password to be picked up by software running on your machine, by other users logged into the system and/or for the password to appear in log files accidentally.

XMPP¶

You can have notifications sent to you through the XMPP protocol.

To achieve this, you should register a new XMPP account that is just used for urlwatch.