alexwohlbruck / apartment-finder

Scrapes apartments.com on a regular interval so I don't have to check it every hour

Apartment finder

Scrapes Apartments.com listings to find the best match for your budget and preferences.

Screenshots

Install and run

Requirements

• Python 3
• Home assistant installation (for push notifications)

Installation

1. Clone this repository and open it up
2. Create a virtual environment:

python3 -m venv env
source env/bin/activate

3. Install packages:

pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Create a home assistant long-lived access token
   1. Open Home Assistant UI
   2. Go to your profile settings
   3. Scroll to "Long-Lived Access Tokens"
   4. Click "Create Token"
   5. Name token whatever you want
   6. Click "OK"
   7. Copy the token for later
5. Create a .env file and add your Home Assistant token

HA_URL=YOUR_HOME_ASSISTANT_URL
HA_TOKEN=YOUR_HOME_ASSISTANT_TOKEN
AREA=south-end-charlotte-nc # Get this from URL of an apartments.com search
BEDROOMS=1
MAX_PRICE=1700
MIN_SQFT=600

# Add any apartment names of results you want to blacklist or favorite
BLACKLIST=Centro Square,Timber Creek,Arbor Village,Presley Uptown,MAA Gateway,ARIUM FreeMoreWest,Arlo,The Bryant Apartments,The Griff,Gateway West,Asbury Flats 
FAVORITES=Fountains Southend Apartment Homes

6. Create a cron job to run the script on an interval

   1. Create a shell script to execute the python script

   /Users/alexw/Scripts/apartment.sh:

   #!/bin/sh
   cd /Users/alexw/Desktop/apartment-finder
   source env/bin/activate
   python3 apt.py

   1. (Mac only) Create a LaunchAgent plist to run the script on an interval

   /Library/LaunchAgents/local.apartment.plist:

   <?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>local.apartment</string>
           <key>ProgramArguments</key>
           <array>
               <string>/Users/alexw/Scripts/apartment.sh</string> <!-- path to shell script -->
           </array>
           <key>StartInterval</key>
           <integer>14400</integer> <!-- every 4 hours -->
       </dict>
   </plist>

   1. Activate the LaunchAgent without reboot:

   launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/local.apartment.plist

   You may have to restart the LaunchAgent if you make changes to the plist:

   launchctl unload /Library/LaunchAgents/local.apartment.plist
   launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/local.apartment.plist

7. To view the results, you will need to load your webpage with a local server. The VS Code Live Server extension works well for this. Open the index.html file in VS code and click the "Go Live" button in the bottom right corner. The page will refresh automatically when the script updates the data.