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Welcome to the CowGoesMoo wiki!

Context

• Pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens don't have a wait list or queue system for the COVID vaccine. I don't want my mom to have to deal with constantly refreshing the pharmacy websites to check for open appointments.
• I plan on running this app on my local machine. If it finds an open vaccination appointment, it will send a notification email.
• As you can imagine, the pharmacies don't provide open APIs to query for appointment availability status. So this app relies on web crawling rather than direct API calls.
• Technically, instead of looking for open appointments, the app looks for a lack of open appointments. I've never seen appointment availability, so I can't program the app to recognize availability. If it can't find a total lack of appointments, then yay!

The Name

"Cow" ➡ vaccine. "Goes Moo" ➡ notifications.

Development Info

• CowGoesMoo has been tested on Windows 10 and MacOS.
• The streetmerchant repo is a stellar reference!
• Certain comments are added to help those who might be learning to code by reading my source code.
• Key open-source tools used:
  • Google Puppeteer for headless browsing.
  • Nodemailer for email & SMS notifications.
  • node-notifier for desktop notifications.