This project provides a python script that:

• Scrapes the price for a set of games on the UK Playstation Store
• Stores these historical prices in a csv file
• Provides an interactive dashboard of prices over time for the various games
• Sends an email alert (using the Gmail API) when a game price drops

The script is intended to be run automatically once per day and is robust to interruptions (i.e. still works if the script fails to run on some days). See below for details on how this automation can be done on MacOS.

• Track the price of any game on the UK Playstation Store
• Track as many games as you want
• Start and stop tracking games at any time.

To track a game, you simply need the game_id. This can be found by navigating to the Playstation Store page for the game. The game_id is the text following the last '/' of the url.

Shows price history for each game you are tracking in a separate chart.

An email alert is sent when a price drop is detected. It includes links to the specific Playstation Store page for every game whose price dropped that day.

Custom error messages are displayed if the script was unable to access the internet or if the email failed to send.

Additionally, an email notification is sent if an error occurred when scraping the price data. It contains links to the specific pages that failed to scrape.

In order to run the script you must:

1. Create a virtual environment from the requirements.txt file in this repo.
2. Create Gmail API credentials as follows:
   1. Go here and complete steps 1. and 2. In Step 2. you must change the SCOPES variable in quickstart.py to "www.gmail.com". This permits the API to send emails from your Gmail account.
   2. Confirm the above step created your token.pickle file.
3. Create an initial game_prices.csv by editing the template game_prices.csv file in this repo. You simply need to fill in the game name (an arbitrary name that you choose to identify each game) and game_id to add each game you wish to track (see above for details on getting the game_id).
4. Place the main.py, game_prices.csv and token.pickle files in the same directory.
5. Run the main.py file using the virtual environment.

After the file is run, it will have generated the Game Prices.html file which is the interactive dashboard. It will also have updated the game_prices.csv file with a new column with the date the script was run. The column records the price of each game on that day.

Each time the main.py script is run on subsequent days, a new column is added recording the latest prices for the games and the price dashboard is updated. When a price drop is detected, the email alert is sent. If the script is re-run on the same day, the latest price column is updated, it does not create another column.

• To track a new game, add the game name and game_id on a new row in the game_prices.csv
• To stop tracking a game, delete the entire row of data for that game in the game_prices.csv, including the game name and game_id. Ensure there are no blank rows in the csv.

Launchd was used to run the script daily on MacOS. With Launchd, if the computer is asleep when the script is scheduled to run, the script will be run immediately when the computer wakes. Cron cannot do this, so Launchd was chosen over cron.

Do the following to prepare the script to run daily:

1. Navigate to your virtual environment folder and open it. Now open bin. You should find a file called Python with a version number e.g. Python3.7. Record the full path to this file.
2. Add a new first line to main.py which consists of #! followed by the full path above e.g. #!/path_to_environment/bin/python3.7
3. Change the extension of the main.py to main.command
4. In Terminal, make the Python script file executable by running chmod +x main.command
5. Edit the playstation_scraper.plist file in this repo, replacing the /PATH/TO/Project/directory/ sections of strings (there are 3 such strings) to the path you are using on your machine to run the script.
6. Save playstation_scraper.plist in /Library/LaunchAgents/

Run the following commands in Terminal:

1. launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/playstation_scraper.plist
2. launchctl start playstation_scraper
3. launchctl list

Check playstation_scraper is in the list displayed in terminal and check its status is 0. A status of 78 means there is a problem with the plist.

Run the following commands in Terminal:

1. launchctl stop playstation_scraper
2. launchctl unload /Library/LaunchAgents/playstation_scraper.plist
3. launchctl list

Check playstation_scraper is not in the list displayed.