New Dog Alerts

Adopting a puppy is competitive. Even with Petfinder alerts and manual daily checks, I missed out on many new pups because I didn't see them soon enough. I created this application so that I could receive immediate notice by email of new dogs added to Petfinder.

This application uses the the Petfinder API v2.0 to fetch dogs and Mailgun to send emails.

Installation

git clone https://github.com/j-d-b/new-dog-alerts.git
cd new-dog-alerts
npm install

Setup

You must have a mailgun account and a Petfinder API Key.

Configure the app by including a .env file in the project root and define the following variables

variable	value
PETFINDER_API_KEY	Petfinder API key or Client ID
PETFINDER_SECRET_KEY	Petfinder secret key
MG_FROM_EMAIL	Mailgun sender email address
MG_API_KEY	Mailgun API Key
MG_DOMAIN	Mailgun domain
CHECK_FREQUENCY_MINUTES	How often you plan on checking for new dogs, this affects how recent dogs must have been updated to be counted as new
NEW_DOGS_RECIPIENTS	Comma-separated email addresses to receieve new dog alerts
ERROR_RECIPIENTS	Comma-separated email addresses to receive error emails (e.g. failed to fetch)
ZIP_CODE	Location to search for dogs (in a 150mi radius)

Usage

Running index.js finds dogs that have been updated/added to Petfinder since CHECK_FREQUENCY_MINUTES ago and sends an email to NEW_DOGS_RECIPIENTS with these dogs. Dogs without photos are not included.

Run this process once with

npm run start

or

node index

With cron

This app was intendent to be deployed with cron and run every CHECK_FREQUENCY_MINUTES

*/<CHECK_FREQUENCY_MINUTES> * * * * cd <PATH_TO_INDEX> && node index

For example

*/15 * * * * cd ~/new-dog-alerts && node index