This repository contains a tool to automatically receive notifications when new vehicles become available on the Athlon Flex Showroom. I created this for personal use. The available cars in the showroom rotate quickly. I noticed I was often either too late to order a new vehicle, or constantly checking the showroom for new availabilities. This repository automates this proces for me. It is structured in such a way that it is easly deployable for anyone who would like to do so; the docs will describe the steps that need to be taken for this.
The showroom uses a REST api under the hood. I created a Python package to smoothen interaction with the API. The package is hosted on Pypi; the docs are hosted on Readthedocs. The client exposes functions to load Vehicle Clusters and Vehicles. While this client is at the core of this project, this repository is focussed on storing and versioning the data it returns. Goals for storing this data are:
- Sending notifications when a Vehicle becomes available that wasn't available before.
- Providing the possibility to query (the history of) all vehicles, using PostreSQL.
- Providing the possibility to create a dashboard on this, just for fun!
The easiest way to get up and running, is using Docker compose. Moreover, to easily manage and monitor all container, you can use Portainer. To install Docker and Docker compose, follow the instructions on the Docker website. To install Portainer, follow the instructions on the Portainer website.
With portainer up and running, create a new stack, using portainer.yaml. Use .docker-env.example with values of your choice, and add them to the stack. The following environment variables are used:
ATHLON_USERNAMEandATHLON_PASSWORDallow the Athlon Flex Client to load information using your personal profile. The main benefit is that the API responses will include computed Net Costs based on your profile (Lease Budget). Note that the project will always store all vehicles, even those not leasable by your profile. These environment variables are optional; without them the API is called anonymously.GROSS_YEARLY_INCOMEandAPPLY_LOONHEFFINGSKORTINGcan be used to provide the API Client with extra information, to be able to properly compute the Net Monthly Cost of a vehicle. When first logging in to the Flex Showroom, a popup is shown which asks for this same information. The information is then stored in a cookie, and used when browsing the showroom. These environment veriables mimic this behaviour. They are optional.
A Postgres database is used to store all data. The following environment variables are required: POSTGRES_USER, POSTGRES_PASSWORD, POSTGRES_HOST, POSTGRES_PORT, POSTGRES_DB. When running with portainer, you probably only need to change the username and password.
The stack also includes a PGAdmin UI. Environment variables PGADMIN_DEFAULT_EMAIL and PGADMIN_DEFAULT_PASSWORD indicate the default Admin login for this server. They do not need to be equal to the PogreSQL env vars. They are not related to the PostgresDB whatsoever. After first login, you'll also still need to add the PostgresDB as a server. Note that you need to use the internal docker endpoint and url, which are postgres and 5432 respectively.
The project currently only supports sending email using Gmail. Environment variables EMAIL_FROM and GOOGLE_APP_PASSWORD are required to get this to work. Take a look at the Google docs to create a Google password for your personal account. Using your regular password will not work. EMAIL_TO indicates the recipient email (multiple recipients is not yet supported).
Prefect is used as orchestration engine. PREFECT_API_URL indicates the internal app url. You most likely do not need to change this value.
Given that you have created env file .docker-env in the root of the repo, spin up all infrastructure using
docker-compose -f infrastructure/development.yml --env-file ./.docker-env -p athlon upAfter all images are downloaded and the containers are built, all infra is running. Prefect will now load and store all Athlon data every 10 minutes. History will be maintained for all entities, using SCD2 logic. The following URLs are relevent:
- http://localhost:13001 is the url for the PostgresDB. You can use it to connect with the database, for example using Azure Data Studio with the PostgreSQL extension.
- http://localhost:13002 is the url for PGAdmin. You can login using the values of env vars
PGADMIN_DEFAULT_EMAILandPGADMIN_DEFAULT_PASSWORD. You can add the PostgresDB by using hostnamepostgresand port5432. - http://localhost:13003 Is the url for the Prefect server. You will find one flow with one deployment. The deployment will run every 10 minutes, and store the data and send a notification email if new vehicles are available.
For the notification mechanism to work, view public.vw_vehicle_availability must exist. You should manually run vw_vehicle_availability.sql once, on the PostgresDB. Automating this is #todo.
Please find technical documentation in the docs folder. Moreover, some subfolders contain markdown files with details on the classes and functions in that folder.
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.
Contributions are most welcome. I've not yet setup a contributing guide, but feel free to reach out to me if you'd like to contribute to and/or use this project.
Feel free to contact me on LinkedIn.