Table of contents

• Description section:
• • Description
• Matlab/Octave section:
• • Syntax
• • Output arguments
• • Input arguments
• • Name,Value pairs
• • Compatibility, version info, and licence

With this function you can download captures to the internet archive that matches a date pattern. If the current time matches the pattern and there is no valid capture, a capture will be generated. The WBM time stamps are in UTC, so a switch allows you to provide the date-time pattern in local time, which will be converted to UTC internally.

This code enables you to use a specific web page in your data processing, without the need to check if the page has changed its structure or is not available at all.

You can also redirect all outputs (errors only partially) to a file or a graphics object, so you can more easily use this function in a GUI or allow it to write to a log file.

Usage instruction about the syntax of the WBM interface are derived from a Wikipedia help page. Fuzzy date matching behavior is based on this archive.org page.

If the Wayback Machine is useful to you, please consider donating. Based on a yearly operating cost of 35m$ and approximately 6k hits/s, please donate at least $1 for every 5000 requests. They don't block API access, require a login, or anything similar. If you abuse it, they may have to change that and you will have spoiled it for everyone. Please make sure your usage doesn't break this Nice Thing™.

Generally, each call to this function will result in two requests. A counter will be stored in a file. The WBMRequestCounterFile optional input can be used to interact with the file. Run WBM([],[],'WBMRequestCounterFile','read') to read the current count.

(These statistics are based on HTTP responses shown on this 60-day average chart and the 990 IRS forms posted by ProPublica.)

WBM(filename,url_part)
WBM(___,Name,Value)
WBM(___,options)
outfilename = WBM(___)
[outfilename,FileCaptureInfo] = WBM(___)

Compatibility considerations:

• HTML error codes are harder to catch on Octave. Depending on the selected verbosity level that means the number of warnings will be larger.
• The duration of a timeout can only be set with websave. This means that for larger files or less stable internet connections, a timeout error will be more likely when using older releases or Octave.

Version: 4.1.0
Date:    2024-04-10
Author:  H.J. Wisselink
Licence: CC by-nc-sa 4.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0 )
Email = 'h_j_wisselink*alumnus_utwente_nl';
Real_email = regexprep(Email,{'*','_'},{'@','.'})

The tester is included so you can test if your own modifications would introduce any bugs. These tests form the basis for the compatibility table above. Note that functions may be different between the tester version and the normal function. Make sure to apply any modifications to both.