craigslist_notify.py

If you're searching on craigslist for a apartment in San Francisco, or any other sought-after item, this script can give you an edge. It polls a craigslist RSS feed URL (which is linked at the bottom of craigslist search and listing pages) and emails you when new postings are found.

If you're crafty, you can have emails sent to your cell carrier's SMS gateway to receive a text message for each posting.

Note: when you run the script, it will first read the RSS feed and only email when new posts are found after that. So don't be surprised if no email is received for a little while. This is so you can safely exit and restart the script without being bombarded by emails.

Requirements

• python 2.4+
• python feedparser module

Usage

$ python rss_notify.py             \
    -f $FEEDURL                    \
    -e $TO_EMAILS                  \
    --smtp_auth_user $FROM_EMAIL   \
    --smtp_auth_pass $SMTP_PASS    \
    --smtp_server $SMTP_SERVER     \
    --smtp_server_port $SMTP_PORT

You may also provide a comma-delimited list of --filters to omit postings containing specific strings.

Tips

• If apartment hunting in San Francisco, filter TMS333, which seems to be the tagline for a particularly spammy apartment chain.
• For gmail's SMTP, use --smtp_server smtp.gmail.com --smtp_server_port 587 along with your gmail address (e.g. --smtp_auth_user myusername@gmail.com) and password.