Berlin Bürgeramt Appointment Bot

A bot that sends a notification when a buergeramt appointment is available. It periodically checks the given buergeramt appointment page for new appointments. It then notifies the user using Telgram. As of now, this bot is meant to be self hosted - it can easily be run on a raspberry pi or a cheap vps.

Please use responsibly: Set a USER_AGENT containing contact information in case something goes wrong.

USE AT OWN RISK

Limitations

Currently this bot is only checking the current and the next month, as I was mainly going for appointments on short notice.

Getting started

• clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/similicious/berlin-buergeramt-bot

• cd into the cloned repository
• install dependencies

npm install

• create .env by copying .env.sample

cp .env.sample .env

• edit .env to suit your needs

BOOKING_URL=The link to the appointments page. Use the link behind "Termin buchen" or "Termin berlinweit suchen" buttons.
USER_AGENT=A string containing your email address
CHECK_INTERVAL_MINUTES=The interval in minutes to check
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=
TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=
HEALTHCHECKS_IO_TOKEN=Optional healthchecks.io token to monitor the bot

• start src/index.js

node src/index.js

Optionally, you can use a node process manager like pm2 to monitor the app and automatically start the bot on boot.

Docker

The bot can also be run using docker. As of now, no image is provided. To build one yourself execute

docker build . -t similicious/berlin-buergeramt-bot

Next, create an .env as outlined above and run the container

docker run -d --env-file .env --name berlin-buergeramt-bot --restart unless-stopped similicious/berlin-buergeramt-bot

Obtaining a bot token and chat id

It's easiest to use the web / desktop client of Telegram for initial setup. More info on bots here.

• Register a new bot using the Telegram bot BotFather.
• Send the bot a message
• Open https://api.telegram.org/bot<<BOT_TOKEN>>/getUpdates in a browser and extract the chatId from result[0].message.chat.id. You might need to refresh to see the message.

Run tests

I included some snapshots of appointment pages in various states. Execute test with

npm run test