NJ MVC Appointment Helper

A third-party Telegram bot that helps you find the most recent available appointment place for you.

If it could help you, please give me a star. Appreciated.

Stay safe. Stay health.

Update 2022 Oct 25: It seems that everything is on the way back to normal (hopefully). I do not know why you cannot find this project repo page in Google search results, which is annoying because it prevents people from getting access to this project. Does anyone have idea about it?

Recent Updates

Please always update to the newest version before reporting any bugs.

To receive updates in real time, you can subscribe to Telegram channel @njmvc_bot_notif.

Update 2022 Oct 25: I am updating the python-telegram-bot to v20.x, which is not compatible with the old version. For the last version of the bot using PTB v13.x, please visit https://github.com/tangbao/NJ-MVC-Appointment-Helper/releases/tag/v0.1.

Demo

@njmvc_bot

Note that you can only use /check function of this demo bot. Only authorized users can use /subscribe. I do not make it fully public because I cannot afford too much cloud resources.

You are welcome to contact me to be an authorized user, but there is no warranty to use this bot.

Privacy Disclaimer

The logger of the bot may record your Telegram username and all the messages you send to the bot. Your Telegram user id will be used to verify if you are an authorized user or not. All the data collected by the bot will only be used for debug and will not be used for any analytics or shared/sold to a third party. The data collected will be stored on the server for at most 7 days.

If you do not agree with this privacy policy, please do not use the bot, and consider building your own bot.

Privacy disclaimer updated 2022 Nov 12.

Usage

/check Check the most recent available places for appointment.

/subscribe Receive a notification when a more recent time slot is available. Authorized users only. You can have at most three subscriptions.

/mysub Manage your subscriptions.

/help Show the help message.

/updateconfig Update the config so that you do not need to restart the bot. Admin user only.

Examples

/check

/subscribe

An example of a running subscription

/mysub

Build Your Own

Use at your own risk. There is NO WARRANTY.

Preparations

• Apply for a Telegram bot from @BotFather. See official instructions. Remember to get the API token.
• Get your (or other authorized users') user id from @userinfobot.

Configuration & Deployment

This part does not work for the current version. Please check v0.1 tag for a working old version.

In the current version, the bot is not persistent. It means that everything will lose after you restart the bot. You have to create the subscriptions again.

• git clone https://github.com/tangbao/NJ-MVC-Appointment-Helper.git
• [Optional but recommended] Create and activate your virtual env, like Anaconda.
• pip install -r requirements.txt
• Check config.yaml if you want some customized settings, like the maximum number of subscriptions a user can create.
• Make a copy of config.secret.yaml.example, name it as config.secret.yaml, follow the comments inside to finish the config.
• Run bot.py and start using!

Resources

The bot is using python-telegram-bot, please refer to its documentation for more detailed information about docs, deployment, and so on.

Development Plan (NO GUARANTEE)

• Make the location list be updated automatically.
• Make the bot persistent - subscription still exists after the bot restarts.
• Automatically submit an appointment (I guess I will never do this).

Questions, Bugs, and Contributions

You can open an issue or email me (i AT tbis DOT me) directly. You can also contact me @kirov_dev at Telegram. PR is welcome.

License

The project is published under the GNU General Public License - v3.0.