scrapyCompass

a scrapy crawler for checking a compass card balance and alerting if it is wrong

Setup

Requires python 3 and Scrapy

Get scrapy here: [https://scrapy.org/]

Before you run this, you should collect the following

• your compass card
• your compass card cvn
• your email ( currently it's set up for gmail )
• your gmail password ( you'll want to generate an app specific password, see instructions below if you need help)
• the maximum amount you expect your balance to change between runs ( 0 for monthly )

Running

To Run:

scrapy runspider compass.py

if it is your first run, you will be asked to set up some info, which will be stored in a local file called compassConfig.ini

To Automate:

On Windows:

Make a batch file with the above command and create a scheduled task.

I personally have it set to run once a day about an hour after I last usually travel.

To Re-set up:

Either modify the .ini file directly or run scrapy runspider compass.py -a reconfig=1

Generating an App password for your Google account

1. Go to https://myaccount.google.com/security?utm_source=OGB&utm_medium=act#signin
2. Click on App passwords
3. Verify your identity with Google
4. in the dropdown at the bottom, enter a custom name (that you'll remember for the app password)
5. click Generate
6. make a copy of this password, you'll only get it once

Todo

• error handling. If compass changes their site, or we fail to parse for some reason, send an email
• potentially handle multiple compass cards and CVNs