This is a script to help people in The Netherlands to make an appointment with IND. It will constantly check for free slots in the calendar and notify you when a free slot is available.
Stack:
Python 3.8+requests 2.28.0pywhatkit 5.3python-dotenv 0.20.0
People wjo deal with IND in The Netherlands always have problems making an early appointment, since it's always busy and they end up making an appointment for like 3 months later. So they either need to refresh the calendar on a web browser constantly to see if anyone has cancelled his/her appointment or use some script to automate the check for them. Hence, this project.
It's a simple script which runs in a shell and in case of finding an available slot in the desired date for the user, will notify the user in the shell by printing a long line of * and also is able to send a Whatsapp message to a provided number.
Since maybe people with less or no knowledge about programming try to use it, I'll try to explain with more details.
The first things which need to be installed are Python3 and virtualenv.
To install python3 check this great tutorial
After installing python, try installing virtualenv. Below is explained how to install it in different operating systems.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade
sudo apt-get -y install python-virtualenv
easy_install virtualenv
In a command line: Here's how to open a command line in windows
pip install virtualenv
The next step is to install Git to be able to clone this repository in your local machine. So check this tutorial which explains how to install it in your OS.
After installing everything you need, it's time to clone this repository in your local machine. in order to do that, run this command in your terminal (command line):
git clone https://github.com/alexjolig/ind_appointment_checker.git
Make sure you know where you're cloning this because then you need to change your current directory to the cloned folder:
cd path/to/ind_appointment_checker
Now you need create a virtual environment in this folder:
virtualenv venv
Then you need to activate it using this command:
source venv/bin/activate
You should see something like this before the current path in your terminal:
(venv)some_address:
the next step is to install the requirements:
make requirements
Now it's time to set your own configuration by specifying what kind of appointment you need, for how many persons, etc...
For this, create a file named .env in the root folder of the project with following content:
NUMBER_OF_PERSONS = <Number of people to make the appointment>
DESIRED_DEADLINE_DATE_FOR_BIOMETRICS = <You need an appointment for biometrics before this data (format dd-mm-yyyy)>
DESIRED_DEADLINE_DATE_FOR_PICKUP_DOCUMENTS = <You need an appointment for pickup documents before this data (format dd-mm-yyyy)>
BIOMETRICS_CHECK_ACTIVE = <True/False Whether you need this appointment type>
PICKUP_DOCUMENTS_CHECK_ACTIVE = <True/False Whether you need this appointment type>
WHATSAPP_MESSAGE_ACTIVE = <True/False Whether you want to be notified by Whatsapp message>
PHONE_NUMBER_FOR_WHATSAPP_MESSAGE = <A phone number which is active in Whatsapp e.g +31612345678>
TIME_INTERVAL_TO_CHECK_FREE_SLOTS_IN_SECONDS = <Number of seconds to wait before checking for available slots again>
DESK = <Abbreviation of the city>
Replace the part after = with your desired values.
NOTE: For DESK use one of these abbreviations for each city you want to make an appointment in:
AMSTERDAM => AM
DEN_HAAG => DH
DEN_BOSCH => DH
ZWOLLE => ZW
HAARLEM => 6b425ff9f87de136a36b813cccf26e23
For example, if you want to check the available slots in Amsterdam, set the value of DESK like this:
DESK=AM
Now everything is ready to run the script. To do that run this command in the terminal where you're in the folder of the project:
make run
If you have any idea to improve this (e.g: adding option to send an email, etc...), I'd be more than happy to get some PRs.