Bandits Schedule Twitter Notifier

This continually running script scrapes the Brookline Bandits 12U web page and sends out a tweet whenever it detects a difference in the schedule from the last time that it checked. The tweet will include a screenshot of the web page (via puppeteer).

Prerequisites

1. Node.js 20.x. This was developed with NodeJS 20.x, but may work with other versions as well.
2. Twitter developer credentials with access to Twitter API (https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/getting-started/getting-access-to-the-twitter-api) a. API Key b. API Secret c. Access Token Key d. Access Token Secret

Installation and Configuration

1. After cloning the repository, make sure that the node_modules are loaded.

  cd banditsNotification
  npm install

2. Create a .env file. This contains the environment variables for the Twitter API credentials. Copy the below into the file and update the values.

TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY=<API Key>
TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET=<API Key Secret>
TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_KEY=<Access Token>
TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET=<Access Token Secret>
RUN_INTERVAL=300
TWITTER_USER_HANDLE=BlineBanditsBot

3. Run the script - it will post a tweet the first time because it doesn't detect any previous data in the archive/ or local folder.

Setting up launchd on a Mac

To use on a Mac system, do the following:

1. Create a new file ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.harvardpan.banditsNotifications.plist. Within the file, put this code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>com.harvardpan.banditsNotifications</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>[FULL PATH OF node BINARY]</string>
            <string>[FULL PATH OF GIT REPOSITORY]/index.js</string>
        </array>
        <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
        <string>[FULL PATH OF GIT REPOSITORY]</string>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>StandardOutPath</key>
        <string>/tmp/com.harvardpan.banditsNotifications.out</string>
        <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
        <string>/tmp/com.harvardpan.banditsNotifications.err</string>
    </dict>
</plist>

Replace the bracketed full paths with the appropriate paths. 2. Add the plist to be loaded by launchctl

sudo launchctl bootstrap gui/501 ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.harvardpan.banditsNotifications.plist

To remove it from launchctl, use the bootout command.

sudo launchctl bootout gui/501 ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.harvardpan.banditsNotifications.plist

Note that the gui/501 should be the user id.