nickdichev / shopbot

Parses "shopping" subreddits and notifies via SMS or Reddit pm

shopbot

This project helps you find items you want to buy and sell online. In particular, it helps you parse "shopping" Reddit pages that use the [H][W][L] tags (have, want, location) in the post's title. The script utilizes the PRAW (Python Reddit API Wrapper) API to parse posts for items you want to buy or sell on subreddits that you choose. The Twilio API is used to facilitate sending SMS messages.

Dependencies

Python 2.7

PRAW -- pip install praw

Twilio -- pip install twilio

Setup

PRAW

Browse to your Reddit account's preferences>apps page. Scroll to the bottom and select "create another app..." . Give your app a name and description and use http://www.example.com/unused/redirect/uri as your "redirect URI". Finally, select the type script for your app. Click "create app".

Make note of your newly created app's client_id and client_secret as they will be needed to fill out the config file.

Twilio [optional]

Setup Twilio for programable SMS. You will need to purchase a phone number and add credits to your account. Find your account_sid and auth_token in the "Programmable SMS" section of your account. These fields will be required in the configuration file. If you do not want to use Twilio you must provide the --pm flag when you run the program.

Bit.ly [optional]

Create a bit.ly account and generate an access token. Navigate to your "Account Profile" and select "Generic Access Token". This is the token that you will put in the configuration file. Note that if you do not supply this field in the configuration file there will be long URLs in the output.

Configuration

Rename config_template.py to config.py and fill out the configuration fields.

PRAW

You will use the client_id and client_secret from the PRAW setup section. The username and password configuration settings are the credentials for the Reddit account that you created the Reddit app with. Finally, set user_agent with the format <platform>:<app ID>:<version string> (by /u/<Reddit username>).

Subreddit Shopping

The subreddit_dict dictionary is used to where and what items to look for. Each item in the dictionary is a dictionary that contains two keys: wanted_items and owned_items. Each of these keys map to a list of strings that are the items you want to buy and the items you want to sell, respectively. An example is provided in config_template.py.

Twilio [optional]

The two fields that come from your Twilio account are account_sid and auth_token. The sms_sender and sms_recipient fields expect the form '+' eg. '[phone]'

Bit.ly [optional]

The only field is bitly_token which is optional, however, it is highly recommended.

Usage

Use python main.py to run the script. The program notifies via Twilio by default, however, you can set the --pm flag to send the output via private message to the username set in the configuration file.

usage: main.py [-h] [--pm]

Shopbot automates your reddit shopping experience!

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit
  --pm        Notify via Reddit pm (default: notify via Twilio)

Deployment

Currently I run this project on my machine locally, however, I intend to run this on a cheap VPS with a cron job.