University of Calgary Room Checker

A Python script that scrapes the UCalgary residence portal to check if rooms are available

Features

• The script uses your personal credentials to log you into your residence portal via your web browser
• Navigates to the room change page and detects if rooms are available
• Prints to the console the available rooms' information, incluiding the general information of the current occupants
• Is able to make a POST to the IFTTT service with the general information on the available rooms, so that you can create cool automations like receive a notification everytime a new room has opened up (read IFTT Integration)
• Is able to refresh the page periodically each given ammount of seconds (default is 300) to continue checking for rooms indefinetely

Requirements

• A supported browser: Chrome, Safari, or Firefox
• A webdriver for your chosen browser:
  • Safari: You don't need to download any additional webdriver, but you need to do the following in the browser:
    • Go to Safari > Preferences > Advanced and click on Show develop menu on menu bar
    • Go to Develop and click on Allow remote automation
  • Chrome: Download the latest webdriver for Chrome from https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/downloads and save it in the same directory as the Python program with the name chromedriver
  • Firefox: Download the latest webdriver for Firefox from https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases and save it in the same directory as the Python program with the name geckodriver
• A modern version of Python (tested on 3.8.2)
• Selenium for python
  • Install via pip: run the pip install selenium command in your terminal / command line

Class specifications / documentation

How to use

Remember to meet all the requirements before starting

If you have used Python before...

• The file roomChecker.py contains the class RoomChecker which performs all the webscraping and contains the needed attributes
• To create an instance of this class use the following constructor format:
• RoomChecker(user, pssw, iftttKey="", checkPeriodically=False)
• Where:
  • user: (str) Your UCalgary username
  • pssw: (str) Your UCalgary password
  • iftttKey: (str) Your unique IFTTT webhook key
  • browser: (str) Your chosen browser, has to be "C" for Chrome, "S" for Safari, or "F" for Firefox
  • checkPeriodically: (bool) Whether you want the program to check for rooms periodically or not

If you haven't used Python before...

• Clone this repository or download the roomChecker.py file, which contains the RoomChecker class
• From here there are two ways you can run the script:
  1. By running a separate Python file
  • Download the main.py file if you havent already, this contains everything you need to get you started
  • Open up your terminal / command line in the same directory as the roomChecker.py and main.py files
  • Run the file with the python main.py command (python3 main.py could work too)
  • You should be promted from the terminal to enter you requiered credentials, when this is done the program will start running.
  2. From the interactive interpreter
  • Open up your terminal / command line in the same directory as the roomChecker.py file
  • Run the python command (python3 could work too)
  • Now your inside your interactive interpreter and you should see >>> at the begining of each line
  • Run from roomChecker import RoomChecker to import the class into the interpreter
  • Create an instance of RoomChecker by running the following:
  • rc = RoomChecker(user, pssw, iftttKey, browser, checkPeriodically)
  • Where:
    • user: Your UCalgary username in quotes ""
    • pssw: Your UCalgary password in quotes ""
    • iftttKey: Your unique IFTTT webhook key in quotes "" (not required)
    • browser: Your chosen browser "C" (Chrome), "S" (Safari), or "F" (Firefox) (not required, default is "C")
    • checkPeriodically: True or False, Whether you want the program to check for rooms periodically or not (not required, default is False)
  • By now blank browser window should have opened up
  • Run rc.begin() to begin checking for rooms

IFTTT Integration

RoomChecker is able to make a POST to the IFTTT service with the general information on the available rooms, so that you can create cool automations like receive a notification everytime a new room has opened up

How to use

1. Create an IFTTT account
2. Visit https://ifttt.com/maker_webhooks and click on Documentation
3. Copy your IFTTT key and keep it in a safe place, you'll input the key when using the program
4. Now you can create a new automation where the trigger is Webhooks / receive a web request and the event name is room_available
5. Now you can add whatever applet you want that will act uppon the web request, where the special "ingredients" are as follows:

Ingredients

• When the program makes a POST to the IFTTT service, a dictionary is sent with the message containing the following data:
  • Value1: The amount of rooms available
  • Value2: The halls in which rooms where found
  • Value3: The date-time when rooms where checked
• You can use these values as "ingredients" inside your automation applet

My recommendation

• This is the applet that I personally use for my IFTTT automation with my cellphone:
  • Applet name: "Send a rich notification from the IFTTT app"
  • Message: "Value1 room(s) available for residence in Value2. Checked: Value3"
  • Title: "ROOM AVAILABLE"
  • Link URL: "https://cas.ucalgary.ca/cas/?service=https%3a%2f%2fucalgary.starrezhousing.com%2fStarRezPortalX%2fRedirectLogin%2fStarNet.StarRez.AuthProviders.CasSso"
  • Image URL: "https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRebQm9jhY-_t2cahGJZE2d1igodtpS8hLyTQ&usqp=CAU"