Probably not a surprise, but this likely violates Walgreens ToS:
> nor will you use or exploit the Services in any way other than as expressly permitted by these Terms;
> ..
> deploy or utilize any automated method of collecting content from our site, such as robots, crawlers, and scraping mechanisms
I would personally err on the side of adhering to terms that a company asks. But although IANAL, it does seem likely that since the scraping is for the public good that even if this did go to court (unlikely), that the court would not rule in favor of Walgreens.
Hey, this is awesome. Is there anyway to know which vaccine you’re getting scheduled for? For example, I’d rather get a Moderna vaccine than Pfizer due to the superior efficacy against strain variants.
Okay, but you should probably be more careful how you describe the information. For instance, you could state that you want the Moderna vaccine because of what they've said about effectiveness against emerging strains.
It's likely that the antibodies produced in response to the Pfizer vaccine have similar cross reactivity as the Moderna vaccine (because they cause production of the same spike protein, which is what the immune system reacts to).
And of course, Pfizer is also studying the situation:
please double check to make sure that you're eligible in your state. for most states you have to be at least 65 and older if you're not an essential worker.
I see that there are walgreens in my area, but when I do it by zip I am getting
"We couldn't find any Walgreens/Duane Reade immunization locations in your area."
I'm assuming that means the vaccine isn't happening there? I only ask because I'm making a script to hit your website every hour and shoot me a text if something becomes available. But nothing will ever be available because it's not a vaccine site, correct?
It's all state-by-state, store-by-store. It's possible that those walgreens are not administering vaccines yet, or the state hasn't rolled out a program with walgreens.
Also, the app was built and launched in the last few days, so if you can confirm that those walgreens are indeed offering vaccines, and show up when going through the registration process on the website, please let me know and I'll look into it.
Zip code is a bit too granular. You should add a distance radius, or something broader like a county. I would gladly travel 50+ miles to get a vaccination.
Good point...thought about doing a typeahead for nearer zip codes if the zip code searched doesn't show up results. Counties are interesting idea, but the bucketing needs to be simplified to lat/lng for data ingestion, which is why zip codes were chosen, arguably the most intuitive thing that's "close enough" to a lat/lng coord.
Dunno what search backend you’re using, but if it’s ElasticSearch this can be done pretty quickly with a Gaussian decay filter. That takes in lat/lng directly, and adjusts the ordering of results.
That’d also give the nifty feature of finding the closest available vaccine, even if it’s a hundred miles away (not a walk in the park, but I’d drive that far personally)
Sweet. I was starting to put one together myself as there is an immense need. I felt it as a first responder looking for a vaccine slot. Finally got one (vaccine), but it wasn’t easy. So many different providers. So much scraping.
Absolutely, and thanks for the kind words. Had to setup nearly all of this scraping just to get a vaccine slot for a family member. Building the site was almost trivial after that.
If you get this to work with the Calvax. wbsite I will love you forever. Right now it takes several minutes PER VACCINATION LOCATION to check if they have appointments available and if) which vaccine they're using
For the county I've gone through the process with, the county periodically adds new links to the calvax website on their home page. Each link is a different day/location.
When you follow the link, you have to fill out your name, address, insurance, employment status, email, phone #, etc. Then you have to answer around 20 medical questions (some of the ones I remember: pregnant? Breastfeeding? Cancer? Had covid before? Allergies? Is this your 1st or 2nd dose? If 2nd, which vaccine did you have before?)
Then there's a confirmation page where you're supposed to verify the info you typed in (but if you take the time to actually verify you reduce the odds of getting an appointment)
Then there's a page where you scribble your signature with a mouse
If you gotten that far without getting booted out by the Cloud flare rate limiting or getting a Heroku error, you're finally allowed to see if the location has available appointments, and see if they are using the flavor of vaccine that you need.
And at the final step it shows no appointments available even though the LA County link that takes you to the calvax link says there are appointments available.
Calvax doesn’t remember your info either.
I have now answered the same questions about 10 times.
Calvax has no contact information to report the issue.
I tried to fill it out for both of my parents in different browser tabs and sometimes their info would get mixed up (janky session management?). Fun stuff, I hope you have more luck in the future with appointments
> nor will you use or exploit the Services in any way other than as expressly permitted by these Terms; > .. > deploy or utilize any automated method of collecting content from our site, such as robots, crawlers, and scraping mechanisms