Variable change threshold warning

[Omniferum]

Just because of some recent web page changes I was curious if some sort of 'threshold' warning could be implemented. i.e. if the value the variable returns goes from

 

v.123

 

to

 

</b>This is the best way to eat pudding</b>

 

It would then pop up a warning with the returned value going "some drastic changes may have been made, would you like to go to the variable pages to check?" if the change was 90% different or something along those lines.

 

It could just be an extra tab like "global variables" where you put in the variables you want to keep an eye on and the desired threshold check. Could also make the value allowable to be empty so it returns a true empty for download links.

[floele]

I'm not too fond of this idea...does not seem reliable to me.

[Omniferum]

I've just found a lot of my variables changed wildly and ketarin still returned "Update ok", again I didn't know anything until I went hunting to fix 'one' program and went through every single one to find little faults that stuffed 75% of my apps.

 

However thinking about it now since the variables i'm referencing to are all related to downloading perhaps just a different approach to error handling in that fashion? The problem I was experiencing was basically I wasn't getting the URL due to page changes. Either empty variables returning 'OK' or downloading the wrong file entirely, so perhaps just a filename check? If it is vastly different from the previous stored give a little "something might be wrong" error. That way you can check it out and go "all is well". Less complicated and I believe achieves the same result.

[shawn]

Sometimes the version number changes dramatically. Sometimes the result you're getting is simply not invalid. The best thing to do is to use a regex pattern match to obtain the most accurate version number, and then assign the change indicator to your version variable. Something like ">([\d\.]+)<" captures most common version numbers.

[Omniferum]

I'm aware some things change wildly by default, I don't use version number checks except for one app (winrar, for reference sake). I mean for other variables that you don't expect to change much, a periodical "This might be wrong, check it out" wouldn't be so bad and makes for troubleshooting easier.

 

That's why it was a per variable/per app type suggestion so not ALL variables are subject to it, just some.

 

Still if it could just be applied to filename, i.e. filename is wildly different from previous one are you sure that it is correct? Y/N?

 

That sort of scenario I think would cover most things whilst being hte simplest implementation.