StackOverflow Notifier via GitHub Actions

This project automatically monitors new questions posted on StackOverflow for specific tags (like selenium) and sends iOS notifications via Pushover. The GitHub Actions workflow runs every 5 minutes, ensuring you stay updated in real-time without receiving duplicates or stale alerts.

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🚀 Features

• ⏱ Scheduled Monitoring: GitHub Actions runs the notifier every 5 minutes.
• 📥 Live Scraping: Scrapes StackOverflow for the latest questions tagged with keywords you define.
• 🔔 Instant Alerts: Sends push notifications using Pushover API.
• 🧠 De-duplication: Tracks seen questions using data.json to avoid repeat alerts.
• 🧹 Daily Cleanup: Automatically removes outdated entries from the data store.

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📁 Project Structure

ajeet214-stackoverflow_notifier/
├── README.md                  # ← You're here
├── __init__.py               # Required for module import
├── data.json                 # Persistent store for notified question IDs
├── requirements              # Project dependencies
├── sample.py                 # Sample test for Pushover setup
├── so_notifier.py            # Core script: scraping + notification logic
├── so_question_scraper.py    # StackOverflow HTML scraper
└── .github/
    └── workflows/
        └── notifier.yml      # GitHub Action workflow file

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🛠 Setup Instructions

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/ajeet214/stackoverflow_notifier.git
cd stackoverflow_notifier

2. Create .env File

Create a .env file in the root directory with the following contents:

PUSHOVER_USER=your_pushover_user_key
PUSHOVER_TOKEN=your_pushover_app_token
STACK_APPS_KEY=your_optional_stackapps_key

3. Install Dependencies

pip install -r requirements

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🧪 Testing Locally

You can test the notification system locally using:

python sample.py

Then, run the main notifier script:

python so_notifier.py

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⚙️ GitHub Actions Workflow

The file .github/workflows/notifier.yml runs every 5 minutes using cron. It:

• Installs dependencies
• Loads secrets from GitHub
• Runs so_notifier.py
• Commits updates to data.json to persist question history

Make sure to store your secrets in the GitHub repository settings under Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions:

• PUSHOVER_USER
• PUSHOVER_TOKEN
• STACK_APPS_KEY (optional)
• GHB_TOKEN (used to push commits)

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📚 Explanation of Key Files

so_question_scraper.py

Scrapes the latest StackOverflow questions using the provided tag. Extracts metadata like question ID, title, tags, and author details.

so_notifier.py

Main orchestrator. Loads past seen question IDs from data.json, scrapes new questions, checks if any are unseen and recent, and pushes a notification. Updates the store with new question IDs.

data.json

A dictionary of the format:

{
  "2025-04-25": [32984732, 3249874849, 1237874],
  "2025-04-26": [324984, 432424, 124342]
}

Used to avoid sending duplicate alerts.

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📈 Ideas for Future Enhancements

• Support multiple tags in parallel
• Add Slack or Telegram notifications
• Persist data in a lightweight database (e.g., SQLite)
• Filter based on vote/view/answer count

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🙏 Acknowledgments

• StackExchange API
• BeautifulSoup
• Pushover

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📄 License

MIT License. See LICENSE file (if added).