Global Entry Alerter

A bot that helps you find an open Global Entry interview appointment.

Problem

Booking an appointment for a Global Entry interview is hard, especially in cities with high demand like SF or NYC.

If you check for open appointments, there is typically nothing available for weeks, sometimes even months. However, appointments are actually constantly opening up, they just get booked very quickly.

This project polls the DHS Scheduler API for open Global Entry appointments, notifying you whenever a new one opens up. If the new appointment is convenient for you, book it immediately — otherwise it will be gone within a few minutes.

This project is not affiliated with U.S. Customs and Border Protection or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Example Usage

Requirements

1. A Twilio account with the ability to send programmable SMS. See here.
2. Python 3.8 or higher

Usage

Configure your settings in a config.toml, set env vars, and leave the global-entry-alerter running for as long as needed.

Once the script sends an alert about a particular appointment, it will keep that appointment in memory and won't notify you of it again. If you restart the script, it may re-send previously-seen appointments.

Installation

$ pip install global-entry-alerter

Running

To run the project:

1. Create your own config.toml (see example_config.toml)
2. Configure your settings (see Configuration below)
3. Set the following env variables using your Twilio account:
   • TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN
   • TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID
   • TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER
4. global-entry-alerter --config ~/path_to_your/config.toml

Configuration

The project uses a .toml configuration file for all settings.

See example_config.toml as a reference for your own config.toml

Setting	Description	Example Value
fetching.lookahead_weeks	How many weeks from today to check for open appointments. E.g. if you want an appointment in the next month, use 4 weeks	4
fetching.wait_seconds	The interval between checks for open appointments. It is best to use a value <= 60	10
fetching.locations	Which Global Entry interview locations to check. Accepts many locations for use cases where multiple locations are feasible (e.g. EWR or JFK if you live in NYC). See here for the full set of codes	[{ name = "JFK", code = 5140 }]
sending.to_numbers	The phone numbers to send alerts to. Include +1 (or whatever country code)	["+11231231234"]

Development

Pre-commit hooks

This project uses pre-commit to enforce linting on all commits. Install it with:

$ poetry run pre-commit install

Formatting

This project uses black and flake8 to enforce a consistent style. To format the project according to the rules, run:

make format

Test Mode

Running in test mode will fetch appointments using the settings in config.toml, but will not actually send alerts. Use this when developing to avoid incurring Twilio costs:

poetry run global-entry-alerter --test