NO LONGER WORKS DUE TO BOT DETECTION. COULD BE USED AS A TEMPLATE FOR OTHER RESOURCES.
Termin (eng. appointment) is essential in Germany, especially in Berlin. Sometimes it is tough to get a termin in public institutions and this bot is a way to automate termin check and send Telegram notification, if free termin was found. The code could be also considered as a template for subsequent development.
The principle of bot operation is to refresh a webpage with needed appointments periodically [TERMIN_URL] and to recognize the change on it. E.g., the page always contains the phrase "No free appointments" [NO_TERMIN_FOUND_STRING]. Then some free appointments are added to the system, and the phrase "No free appointments" disappears. There is a new phrase (e.g., "List of free appointments" [TERMIN_FOUND_STRING]) instead of the old one. Bot recognizes the change on the webpage and sends Telegram notifications about free appointments.
To first use the program, you must create a properties file for termin-bot.
There is an example: src/main/resources/global.properties.
Here is a list of the properties:
BOT_NAME - The name of the bot. Used only in the log output.
BOT_PORT - The port which the chrome driver uses to check termin webpage.
BOT_TOKEN - Unique telegram bot token. You can get it after the creation of the telegram bot. Use BotFather to create a bot. If you want to start the program without telegram notifications, please start with the default value from the example properties file.
USERS - List of usernames from Telegram who get access to the bot. It could be ignored, if you test the program without Telegram notifications.
CHAT_IDS - Telegram chat id, which is generated after the user sends the first message to the bot. Leave this field empty. It will be filled in automatically.
TERMIN_URL - The link to a website with appointments. This termin-bot was tested with the following website: https://otv.verwalt-berlin.de/ams/TerminBuchen If you use it for the same resource, paste the link with the needed Visa type.
TERMIN_FOUND_STRING - The webpage's phrase complies with free appointments. An example is provided for otv.verwalt-berlin.de.
NO_TERMIN_FOUND_STRING - The webpage's phrase complies with the absence of free appointments. An example is provided for otv.verwalt-berlin.de
BUTTON_ID - The button which should be clicked to get a page with appointments. An example is provided for otv.verwalt-berlin.de
After editing the properties file you can build this java program with Maven or use released version.
You need Java 11 to run it.
To start the bot, run jar file with a path to the properties file as an argument.
java -jar termin-bot-1.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar <path_to_properties_file>
If you start the program without an argument, the default path to properties is src/main/resources/global.properties.
You could also run the bot in Docker container. Go to the root folder of the project and run the following commands:
docker build -t my-termin-bot -f src/main/docker/Dockerfile .
docker run --name termin-bot-container my-termin-bot
Important:
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Before the building of docker image be sure that the jar-with-dependencies is present after maven build in target folder. If you have problems with the build, create target folder in the project root directory and paste the released version of jar file.
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By default, for docker image is used the properties from src/main/resources/global.properties. If you want to change it, edit src/main/docker/Dockerfile
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Hardcode CHAT_IDS in properties file or use Docker volumes. After container restart all editions of properties file will be deleted.
If you want to host this bot, you can use Heroku. It is easy to host Docker containers there. You need only heroku.yml.
Find it here: src/main/docker/heroku.yml
Information on how to deploy docker containers on Heroku: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/build-docker-images-heroku-yml