📢 Website Change Notifier

A lightweight Python project that scrapes a website and sends notifications when changes are detected.
Originally built for signup to openhouse-zuerich.ch with notification delivery via Telegram Bot.

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🚀 Quick Start

1. Clone and install dependencies

   git clone https://github.com/your-username/reservation-notifier.git
   cd reservation-notifier
   poetry install

2. Configure webpages to watch In folder config modify file urls.json with the urls you want to watch and scrape.

3. Set up a Telegram Bot

   • Create a bot with @BotFather → get your TELEGRAM_TOKEN.
   • Find your Chat ID by visiting:

     https://api.telegram.org/bot<TELEGRAM_TOKEN>/getUpdates
     

   • Test the bot via poetry run python run send_test_telegram.py

4. Create a .env file In main folder rename .env_templateto .env and modify this content:

   TELEGRAM_TOKEN=your_token_here
   CHAT_ID=your_chat_id_here
   TRIGGER_WORD=your_word_to_scrape_here
   

5. Run the checker and notifier poetry run python src/reservation_notifier/main.py

📝 Project Features & MVP Tracker

🟢 MVP Features

Feature	Description	Priority	Tech Notes
Web scraper	Detect when a website changes.	High	BeautifulSoup
Telegram notification	Send alerts to Telegram chat.	High	requests

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🟡 Nice-to-Have Extensions

Feature	Description	Impact	Effort	Notes
Email notifications	Alternative to Telegram	Medium	Low	Risks email security
Private channel alerts	Push updates to a Telegram channel	Medium	Low	Reliable mobile alerts
Automatic sign-in	Scrape behind login pages	High	High	Needs session handling
Status tracker	Notify only when state changes	High	Medium	Add in main.py
Service, cron	Service to run script automatically	Low	Medium	systemd service / cron so the notifier runs automatically in the background

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🔑 Key Decisions

Requirements that were discovered while building the project.

• Security: Use Telegram chat instead of email sent from my private account → avoid risking personal accounts
• Notifications: Prefer Telegram private channel instead of chats → more reliable notifications on mobile
• Connectivity: You must have a stable internet connection → tether to a second phone with hotspot if unstable
• Improvement: Status tracker in main.py → prevent spamming, avoid duplicate alerts

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⚡ Quick Ideas

• Notifier for Filmpodium → movie program updates
• Notifier for Berlin Marathon 2026 → registration alerts
• Notifier for Birthday Database → reminders

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📆 Review Notes

• Last reviewed: 2025-09-22
• Next review: TBD

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📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License – see the LICENSE file for details.