Junkyard

Some backstory:

I bought a beat up car and fixed it up with my brother!

Part of the process was pulling up PickNPull's website EVERY DAY to find out if a new car in the same year/make/model came into the yard. Tedious, right?

Well, as all software engineers do, we write a quick and simple program (translation: a few all nighters on weekends because we can't put the code down) to just do it for us and then automate it to send out the email every morning at 8am so we can hit the junkyard after work.

As a result, I was able to fix my AC, grab various parts for my car, help my brother convert his car from an automatic to a manual, fix my little-brother-in-law's car in a MYRIAD of different ways...

At 1/10th the cost of actually buying the parts brand new. :)

New AC compressor OEM: $500

Used AC compressor OEM from junkyard: $50-$70. (get the hint, yet?)

Oh, also, the money I saved, I bought tools! Now I have a garage full of more tools than I know what to do with....

TL;DR:

Check junkyard inventory, email yourself and family automagically.

To set up:

1.) Run dotnet user-secrets init in the project directory

(I `suggest` you remove `<UserSecretsId>661bb1cf-857e-4f4e-9d31-df561db8d894</UserSecretsId>` from the .csproj file beforehand, it will autogen that line for you if you run the command, idk, run at your own risk without deleting)

2.) Add keys for "Name", "Email", "AccessKey", "Host", and "Port" on the "OutgoingMailBox" section by running:

dotnet user-secrets set "OutgoingMailBox:Name" "{{MAILBOX_NAME_HERE}}" (Shows the user who sent the email.... I think?)

dotnet user-secrets set "OutgoingMailBox:Email" "{{MAILBOX_EMAIL_HERE}}" (The actual email for login)

dotnet user-secrets set "OutgoingMailBox:AccessKey" "{{MAILBOX_ACCESSKEY_HERE}}" (I don't really want to say the word, but you know... the key you use to access your email... it goes with the username...)

2.5) Some server settings for the email to actually communicate below, you may have you look these up depending on your email provider...

dotnet user-secrets set "OutgoingMailBox:Host" "{{HOST_HERE}}" (I used "smtp.gmail.com" for my gmail account)

dotnet user-secrets set "OutgoingMailBox:Port" {{PORT_HERE}} (I used "465" for my gmail account)

dotnet user-secrets set "OutgoingMailBox:UseSSL" {{UseSSL_HERE}} (I used 'true' for my gmail account)

(If ALL the above doesn't work, go to ~/.microsoft/usersecrets/{{GENERATED_GUID_MATCHING_CSPROJ}}/secrets.json and edit it to match the appsettings.json there manually.)-----

3.) Inside of the docs path create two files

SUBSCRIBERS.txt - Contains a JSON array of people subscribed to this service, ex:

[
    {
        "name": "Foo"
        "email": "bar@baz.com"
    },
    ...,
    {
        "name": "Syed Isam Hashmi",
        "email": "is@mhashmi.com" (feel free to contact me if you actually get a car part out of this :)
    },
    ...
]

and

URLS.txt - NewLine delimitted file containing API URLs for PickNPull, ex:

https://www.picknpull.com/api/vehicle/search?&makeId=90&modelId=1150&year=2004-2006&distance=250&zip=75050
https://www.picknpull.com/api/vehicle/search?&makeId=182&modelId=3608&year=2004-2006&distance=250&zip=75050

(I only have two cars on my watchlist, so... two URLs)

Appendix

How to get those URLS?

1.) Go to picknpull.com

(in chrome at least, right-click and inspect, go to network tab, other browsers?, no clue)

2.) Proceed to do a search.

3.) In the network panel, find the row starting with search?

4.) Click the row

5.) Click the headers tab

6.) Copy the request URL into that URLS.txt file as a new row.

7.) Done!

Automating

Linux

You can run crontab -e to edit your cron file and add something like this at the end:

0 7 * * * dotnet exec {{PATH_TO_PROJECT}}/Junkyard.dll

Windows

Windows has a scheduling assistant that can be used, pretty intituitive from some google searches.

If this saves you money! Good job! :)

If it hasn't yet, it will!

Best of luck!

If you change this to work with another Junkyard service provider or find a bug, please submit a PR. If you just enjoy using it, send me an email, I would love to hear about any mechanic work or conquests this may have help you achieve! :)

syedisamhashmi / Junkyard