VFS Appointment Bot

Many thanks to @hnavidan. This repo is a fork from his original bot.

This python script automatically checks available VFS appointments and notifies the earliest opening via Telegram.

Description

The original script has been improved by adding more checks to eliminate false alarms. The VFS website for Moroccans is buggy, so a Javascript Ajax check was added before the original one. It sends the exact website message to be 100% sure there is still no appointment.

The bot is now using undetected_chromedriver for the best 💪🏽.

Belgium and Portugal

This script was initially made for specific visa center (Belgium (@hnavidan) and now Rabat). However, it can also be used for other centers around the world. Feel free to learn selenium to match your visa center website.

The script is using French version of the website, to switch language just edit script strings accordingly and browser language (see loggin_helper() or chrome preference)).

Logging

All logged Messages will be sent in the conversation where you initiate the /start command. It can be yours or a chat group where you added the bot. This way you and other people can track the journey of the robot and command the bot on telegram.

Important messages, as few as possible, such as when the appointment appears and is available, and rarely errors, are sent to the channel_id where you can also add friends to be warned.

Dependencies

See requirements.txt for Python packages

System library tesseract is needed. On Mac you can install it with brew install tesseract, and specify its executable path in utils.py.

How to use

1. Clone the repo.
2. Install the dependencies.
3. Create a Telegram bot using BotFather and save the auth token.
4. Make a Telegram channel to notify the appointment updates.
5. Use @username_to_id_bot or @myidbot to find the channel id and your own account id.
6. Copy the config.ini.dist as config.ini and fill in the fields.
7. Edit the ajaxRequest.js file to match your visa center locations parameters.
8. Run the script and /start the bot from telegram !

Captcha

It uses OpenCV along with Tesseract to recognize the captcha. It can be low, sometimes it takes 10-15 tries, but it works (and for free !).

Telegram

Add the created bot in the channel you want to post updates to. Make sure to specify your account id (or several accounts) as admin_ids in the config.ini, it prevents others from using the bot, which might cause unexpected behaivor.

Help

Here are the bot commands to use from telegram :

• /help: Prints the help message.
• /start: Starts the bot.
• /quit: Stops the bot. (It can be started again using /start as long as the Python script is running.)
• /check: Ask for a new spontaneous appointment check

VFSBot.py command as an optionn --no-headless for testing and debugging purpose. It actually opens the chrome browser and you can visually follow every actions.

Development

Feel free to improve this version by submitting a pull request.

As VFS appointments cause problems all over the world and with so many different websites, we could handle them all.