Global Entry Appointment Cancellation Checker

This allows you to check and set up notifications for Global Entry enrollment appointment cancellations through the Global Online Enrollment System website. It uses PhantomJS, a headless browser, to log in and report back the first available open appointment. If one is found sooner than your current appointment, it will notify you by email. It does not make any changes to your account or your appointment.

Once setup, you can retrieve the soonest available appointment day with the following command:

phantomjs [--ssl-protocol=any] ge-cancellation-checker.phantom.js [-v | --verbose]

Similarly, if you only want to check to see if there is a sooner one than already scheduled, run:

./ge-checker-cron.py

(Note that this will send an email notification to the address in your config.json if a new appointment is found.)

Setup

Please be aware that you must first sign up and schedule an enrollment appointment via the GOES website before using this script. This does nothing more than check for the first available appointment as you would do manually through a browser like Chrome or Firefox, yourself. Also note that because this navigates the GOES website like any other browser ane updates to the GOES website may break it.

Dependencies

The following must be installed and available in your $PATH:

• PhantomJS
• Python (2.7)
• Sendmail

Note: Many ISP's block port 25, used for email. If you want to set up email notifications for appointment cancellations and your ISP blocks port 25, a good way around this is to set up Sendmail to send email through Gmail.

Configuration

To get started, copy config.json.example to config.json. In your new config, fill out the following settings:

• current_interview_date_str: your currently scheduled interview date, in English (e.g., "September 19, 2015"). Reminder: This must be updated every time you reschedule your appointment.

• logfile: (optional) the full path to a logfile to be used by ge-checker-cron.py. New cancellations, unsuccessful checks, and errors are logged in this file, if provided.

• email_from: the "from" address for the notification email

• email_to: a list of addresses to send the notifiation email to (must be an array)

• username: the username to log in with on the GOES website

• password: the password to log in with on the GOES website

• enrollment_location_id: the value of the enrollment location that you must choose when setting up your appointment. After choosing from the dropdown, find this ID by running this in the console:

    document.querySelector('select[name=selectedEnrollmentCenter]').value
  

• init_url: the login page of the GOES website.

Please also ensure you are the only one with access to your config.json to protect your username and password.

Scheduling

If you'd like to be notified of cancellations regularly, you can add the ge-checker-cron.py to your cron file with the crontab -e command. The following runs every half hour:

*/30 * * * * /path/to/global-entry-cancellation-checker/ge-checker-cron.py >/dev/null 2>&1

Of course, please make sure that SendMail is working before trusting this to notify you. If you want to keep a record, be sure to set a logfile path in your config.json.

Contribution

If you're interested in contributing, here are a few feature ideas that might improve this:

• Add ability to not send an email when running go-checker-cron.py (maybe a --no-email flag?)
• Ignored dates: allow the user to provide a list of days for the checker to ignore
• Plugin system: update ge-checker-cron.py to allow configuration for running multiple phantom scripts and keeping track of multiple appointment systems (not just a Global Entry cheker - e.g., the DMV).