uk-reg-monitor 0.2.3

A Python package that monitors UK legislation for material changes and sends notifications via email, Slack, or webhook

uk-reg-monitor

uk-reg-monitor is an open-source Python package that monitors UK employment legislation for material changes on a schedule. It acts as a companion client to the UK Employment Law Change Detector API: you configure which Acts of Parliament to watch and how often to check, and uk-reg-monitor handles the scheduling, calls the API on each cycle, and routes any detected changes to your team via email, Slack, or a generic webhook.

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Installation

pip install uk-reg-monitor

For development (editable install with test dependencies):

git clone https://github.com/example/uk-reg-monitor.git
cd uk-reg-monitor
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Requires Python 3.12 or later.

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Quickstart

Step 1 — Run the setup wizard

uk-reg-monitor init

The wizard guides you through choosing which Acts to monitor, how often to check, and how to receive notifications. It writes config.yaml to your working directory and validates it automatically.

Prefer to configure manually? Create config.yaml by hand:

api:
  base_url: "https://uk-employment-law-change-detector.onrender.com"
  timeout: 30

schedule:
  frequency: "daily"   # hourly | daily | weekly
  time: "08:00"        # HH:MM — used by daily and weekly
  day: "monday"        # day of week — used by weekly only

acts:
  - url: "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/18"
    name: "Employment Rights Act 1996"
  - url: "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15"
    name: "Equality Act 2010"
  - url: "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/52"
    name: "Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992"

notifications:
  email:
    enabled: false
    smtp_host: "smtp.example.com"
    smtp_port: 587
    use_tls: true
    username: ""
    password: ""
    from_addr: "[e-mail]"
    to_addrs:
      - "[e-mail]"

  slack:
    enabled: false
    webhook_url: ""

  webhook:
    enabled: false
    url: ""
    method: "POST"
    headers:
      Content-Type: "application/json"

Then run uk-reg-monitor validate to check it.

Step 2 — Start the monitor

uk-reg-monitor start

The monitor runs an immediate check on startup, then repeats on the configured schedule. Press Ctrl+C to stop.

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CLI Commands

uk-reg-monitor init

Runs the interactive setup wizard. Guides you through choosing Acts, schedule frequency, and notification channels, then writes config.yaml and validates it automatically. Passwords are collected without echoing to the terminal.

uk-reg-monitor init
uk-reg-monitor init --config /path/to/config.yaml

uk-reg-monitor start

Starts the scheduled monitor. Runs an immediate check, then repeats according to schedule.frequency.

uk-reg-monitor start
uk-reg-monitor start --config /path/to/config.yaml
uk-reg-monitor start --verbose

uk-reg-monitor check

Runs a single immediate check across all configured Acts and prints the results to the terminal. Does not start the scheduler.

uk-reg-monitor check
uk-reg-monitor check --config /path/to/config.yaml

uk-reg-monitor validate

Validates config.yaml and prints a summary. Exits with a non-zero code if validation fails. Use this to verify configuration before deploying.

uk-reg-monitor validate
uk-reg-monitor validate --config /path/to/config.yaml

Global flags

Flag	Description
--config PATH	Path to config.yaml (default: ./config.yaml)
--verbose	Enable debug logging

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Schedule options

frequency	Requires	Behaviour
hourly	—	Runs every 60 minutes
daily	time: "HH:MM"	Runs once per day at the specified time
weekly	time: "HH:MM", day: "<weekday>"	Runs once per week on the specified day and time

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Notification channels

Enable any combination of channels in config.yaml. Notifications are only sent when at least one Act has a material change.

• Email — plain-text email via SMTP (supports TLS)
• Slack — POST to a Slack incoming webhook URL
• Webhook — POST raw JSON to any HTTP endpoint

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The UK Employment Law Change Detector API

uk-reg-monitor delegates all intelligence to the UK Employment Law Change Detector API. That API analyses legislation pages and determines whether a material legislative change has occurred. uk-reg-monitor provides the scheduling, configuration, and notification layer on top.

The package connects to the live hosted API at https://uk-employment-law-change-detector.onrender.com by default — no additional setup is required. Interactive API documentation is available at https://uk-employment-law-change-detector.onrender.com/docs.

If you need to point at a different instance, set api.base_url in your config.yaml.

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Development

# Run tests
pytest

# Run tests with coverage
pytest --cov=uk_reg_monitor

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License

MIT