Python script that sends an email when a COVID-19 vaccine appointment is available near you!
Data comes from vaccinespotter.org by Nick Muerdter. This script runs a Prefect flow that checks for nearby appointments every X minutes and sends an email when some are available.
I built this to find an appointment for myself, because the appointments were going and opening up so quickly, I found that even checking the website every couple of hours wasn't cutting it. I set this script up to check every 10 minutes and ended up finding a slot within a day!
I'd like to make this easier to configure and perhaps re-factor it to check and send notifications for multiple people. For now, running the flow will check for one set of coordinates and send a notification to one email address that you need to add credentials for. If you want to run it yourself, clone the repo and follow the setup below!
Several environment variables need to be set. Here is an example:
STATE=FL # 2-letter abbreviation of the state you are in
LATITUDE=25.7617
LONGITUDE=-80.1918
DISTANCE_MILES=100 # How far away you want to find appointments (in miles)
EMAIL=me@me.com # Email address to send notifications to
INTERVAL_MINUTES=10 # How often (in minutes) to check appointments
PREFECT__CONTEXT__SECRETS__EMAIL_PASSWORD= # see below
PREFECT__CONTEXT__SECRETS__EMAIL_USERNAME= # see belowAn easy way to find your latitude/longitude is from this website: https://www.gps-coordinates.net/my-location.
The script uses an EmailTask from Prefect, which requires a username and password. Per Prefect, its recommended to use a Google App Password if you use Gmail. One way to set these is by the environment variables provided above, but if you have a different Prefect setup you could set the Secrets another way.
A neat trick if you want text message updates is to utilize your cell phone provider's domain (more details here):
- AT&T: phonenumber@txt.att.net
- T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net
- Sprint: phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
- Verizon: phonenumber@vtext.com or phonenumber@vzwpix.com
- Virgin Mobile: phonenumber@vmobl.com
To make sure you have all the right Python packages, create a virtual environment:
conda env create -f environment.yml
conda activate vaccine-apptsMake sure to set your environment variables (see above), then run the script!
python vaccine-appts.pyIf you see the following message, then its working! The flow will run at the end of the interval period.
[2021-04-11 23:16:47+0000] INFO - prefect.covid-vaccine-appt-notifier | Waiting for next scheduled run at 2021-04-11T23:20:00+00:00An email notification only gets sent out if appointments are found, otherwise you will see this message in the logs:
[2021-04-11 23:26:00+0000] INFO - prefect.TaskRunner | No appointments found :(Ideally you would want this running all the time, because COVID vaccine appointment availability changes really fast. If you have a computer always-on at home that will work, or you could deploy it in the cloud.
Check out deploying.md for details on some deployment options.
- This project would not be possible without the major work done by Nick Muerdter for vaccinespotter.org.
- Thanks to Saturn Cloud (my employer) for access to the platform for building and running the flow.