This is a bot that polls rite-aids for available COVID appointments, and will text you when they become available. I wrote this because as an active cancer patient, I am a member of 1a for Pennsylvania's vaccine roll out, but found it incredibly difficult to get an appointment.
I am unable to support this. I went back and forth on whether to release at all, but ultimately decided based upon interest from twitter interest. I also didn't feel right about putting myself in a spot to decide who had an advantage getting a spot and who did not. The bot itself is quite trivial, and illustrates how easily PA could have incorporated something similar itself.
You need to know how to install python, edit small python programs, and run programs from the command line. The code is pretty simple: it checks a list of rite-aids, identified by store number, for COVID vaccine appointments. It texts you when an appointment is available. The code is hopefully over-commented so it is clear where to change things.
Before running, please edit the list of stores (stores_near_me in the code)
with those actually close to you. You can find stores with the vaccine in PA by
going to [https://www.riteaid.com/pharmacy/covid-qualifier].
This requires a twilio.com account. They are free.
To install:
$ pip install twilio
To use: NOTE: ALL PHONE NUMBERS ARE OF THE FORM "+14125551212" You need to include the "+1" and have the full 7 digits
$ export TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID = <your SID>
$ export TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN = <your token>
$ export TWILIO_PHONE = <your twilio phone number> (from text #)
$ export CELLPHONE = <your cell phone> (to text #)
$ ./check.py
<you can also hard code the above in the script if you like>
If you get an alert, go to the rite-aid scheduler page. If you open up that page in your browsers dev tools (View->Developer->Developer Tools in Chrome) and clicking on the days will show the times available without having to click through each morning/afternoon/evening options for each day.
Thanks to Jacob for pointing this out.