berlin-appointment-finder 1.1.0

Finds appointments at the Berlin Bürgeramt, broadcasts them via websockets

Bürgeramt appointment finder

This server looks for Bürgeramt appointment every few seconds. You can make it look for any kind of appointment.

This is the code behind All About Berlin's Bürgeramt appointment finder.

If this tool helped you, make a donation. Building things for Berliners is my full time job.

What this tool does

This tool looks for appointments on service.berlin.de every 3 minutes. When it finds an appointment, it makes a sound. It can be used as a command line tool, or as the backend for a web-based tool.

This tool can't book the appointment for you. It can't look for Ausländerbehörde appointments. These features will not be implemented.

Setup

1. Install the script

Run this command in your terminal:

# It might be called 'pip3' on your computer
pip install berlin-appointment-finder

You need Python 3 on your computer. If you have macOS or Linux, you already have it. If you have Windows, you're on your own.

If you get a error: legacy-install-feature, try some of the solutions listed here. Do not open an issue; the problem is not related to this project.

2. Find the appointment type you need

Pick a service from the list of services on Berlin.de, and copy the URL. For example, https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/120686/ for the Anmeldung.

3. Run the script

Run this command and follow the instructions on your screen:

appointments

The script will check Berlin.de every 3 minutes. When it finds appointments, it lists them. Just keep an eye on the terminal. It will also emit a sound.

Updating the script

If you have an older version of the script, update it with this command:

pip install --upgrade berlin-appointment-finder

Instructions for nerds

This script can be configured with command line arguments or environment variables.

Type appointments --help to see available command line arguments.

These are the available environment variables:

BOOKING_TOOL_EMAIL=[e-mail]
BOOKING_TOOL_ID=johnsmith-dev
BOOKING_TOOL_URL=https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/120686/

The script broadcasts broadcasts the appointments it finds with websockets. By default, it broadcasts them on port 80.

A Dockerfile is supplied in this repo. It's the same one I use on All About Berlin.

The polling rate is limited to 180 seconds (3 minutes), as required by the Berlin.de IKT-ZMS team ([e-mail]).

Local development

To work on this script, install it with pip install -e /path/to/this/repo. When you run appointments, it will run your local version with any changes you have made to it. You only need to run this command once.

FAQ

Can you make it work with Ausländerbehörde appointments?

No. It's not possible due to rate-limiting by Berlin.de. You probably don't need an Ausländerbehörde appointment anyway.

I get an HTTP 418 response

This means that Berlin.de is blocking you as a bot. There is nothing I can do to fix this problem.