cl-prenotavaccino's Introduction

prenotavaccino

Web scraping for fun and profit^W for a registration to get my COVID-19 jab.

From the original write-up:

Rumor says that in a few days everyone in Tuscany, irrespective of their age, could finally register for their first shot of the vaccine; that means "click day", i.e. continuously polling the registration website until your registration category is open. I am sure a bird will eventually announce when the service will be open, i.e. the time of the day, so no need to stay on the lookout for the whole day, but I figured I could use this as an excuse to do a little bit of Web scraping in Common Lisp, so here it goes.

Instructions

Clone the repository:

$ cd ~/quicklisp/local-projects
$ git clone https://github.com/iamFIREcracker/cl-prenotavaccino.git

Quickload the defined system:

> (ql:quickload "prenotavaccino")
To load "prenotavaccino":
  Load 1 ASDF system:
    prenotavaccino
; Loading "prenotavaccino"
.....
("prenotavaccino")

Call PRENOTAVACCINO:START:

> (prenotavaccino:start)

Note: the scraper uses Twilio to send notification SMSs when "something changed"; the following environment variables can be used to provide your Twilio's account details:

TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID: your account SID
TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN: the authentication token
TWILIO_FROM_NUMBER: the from number of the messaging service
TWILIO_TO_NUMBERS: who to send messages to (space separated list)

If any of these environment variables is found empty, you will be prompted to provide a value as soon as START is invoked:

> (prenotavaccino:start)
TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID=qwerasdfzxcv
TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN=qwerasdfzxcv
TWILIO_FROM_NUMBER=+12345678
TWILIO_TO_NUMBERS=+23456789 +345678901

To stop the scraper simply call the STOP function: