PacktPub Grabber
Grabs Today's Free Learning eBook from PacktPub & notifies you via Email.
Dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt
Or, on Arch Linux:
pip2 install -r requirements.txt
Configuration
Steps to configure the script.
PacktPub Account Information
Replace USERNAME and PASSWORD on line 8 and 9 with your PacktPub username (email address) and password.
br.form["email"] = "USERNAME"
br.form["password"] = "PASSWORD"
Email Account Information
The script sends the email from a Gmail address you specify to your another email address. Note that, only Gmail account is accepted for sending email. I'd advise not to use your existing Gmail account since you need to enable access for less secure apps.
- Create a new Gmail account.
- Enable access for less secure apps on the (new) sending Gmail account.
- Replace the "FROM", "TO", and "EMAIL PASSWORD" on the last line with your sending Gmail address, receiving Email address and the sending Gmail account's password respectively.
send_email("FROM", "TO", "PacktPub Grabber", outcome, "EMAIL PASSWORD")
After each run, you'll receive an email in the "TO" address with the success/failure message.
Run
Two ways to go about running the script.
Manually
To run manually, simply go to the shell and type:
python /path/to/packtpub-grabber/packtpub-grabber.py
Automatically
Since the purpose of the script is to automate the whole process of getting a free Ebook everyday, you should choose an automated way. So, put the script on your VPS and then setup a cron job so that the script runs everyday on the given time.
Run crontab -e and add the following lines to run the script everday at 6.30 PM.
30 6 * * * python /path/to/packtpub-grabber/packtpub-grabber.py 2>>errors.log
The errors, if any, can be viewed on errors.log file.