COWIN vaccine appointment slot tracker/notification for age 18+ using PHP script
Update: Check our latest article for getting email notification for CoWIN Vaccine slot availability.
As the country open up Covid 19 vaccination for 18+ age group on COWIN portal, there is a acute shortage of vaccines and appointment slots. In many states, only private hospitals have started vaccination for 18+ age group but with very limited number of slots available.
Using a PHP script, we can monitor the vaccine availability and get email notification.
Step 1: Deploy a Linux server in India
Even though you can run the script on local computer, it is best to deploy it on a server as you can run it 24×7. I recommend using AWS to deploy a Ubuntu server with PHP and Apache or Nginx. Make sure the server is located in India as the API is blocked outside India.
Step 2: PrerequisitesÂ
- Download PHPMailer and copy PHPMailer.php and SMTP.php files to web directory. (https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/tree/master/src)
- Create a Gmail account to send notification emails. Enable less secure apps or use app specific password if you have 2 step verification on.
- Identify the district code for your district from https://getjab.in/.
Step 3: Modify the PHP script as required
<html>
<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
ini_set('display_startup_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
require("PHPMailer.php");
require("SMTP.php");
date_default_timezone_set('Asia/Kolkata'); // Your time zone
$distid=781; // Your district code
$today = date('d-m-Y');
for($j=1; $j<=10; $j++)
{
echo '<h2>Mod time '.$today.'</h2>';
$links='https://cdn-api.co-vin.in/api/v2/appointment/sessions/public/findByDistrict?district_id='.$distid.'&date='.$today.'';
$agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/39.0.2171.95 Safari/537.36";
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $links);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $agent);
curl_setopt ($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1) ;
curl_exec($curl);
$file_get_contents=curl_exec($curl);
if (!is_null($file_get_contents)){
$parse=json_decode($file_get_contents);
$data=$parse->sessions;
//echo $file_get_contents;
$arrLength = count($data);
for($i=0; $i<$arrLength; $i++)
{
if($data[$i]->min_age_limit==18)
{
echo '<p>';
$name=$data[$i]->name;
echo '<b>Name:</b> '.$data[$i]->name;
echo '<br>';
$address=$data[$i]->address;
echo '<b>Address:</b> '.$data[$i]->address;
echo '<br>';
$pincode=$data[$i]->pincode;
echo '<b>District:</b> '.$data[$i]->pincode;
echo '<br>';
$district=$data[$i]->district_name;
echo '<b>Pincode:</b> '.$data[$i]->pincode;
echo '<br>';
$date=$data[$i]->date;
echo '<b>Date:</b> '.$data[$i]->date;
echo '<br>';
$fee=$data[$i]->fee;
echo '<b>Fee:</b> '.$data[$i]->fee;
echo '<br>';
$age=$data[$i]->min_age_limit;
echo '<b>Age:</b> '.$data[$i]->min_age_limit;
echo '<br>';
$capacity=$data[$i]->available_capacity;
echo '<b>Capacity:</b> '.$data[$i]->available_capacity;
echo '<br>';
$vaccine=$data[$i]->vaccine;
echo '<b>Vaccine:</b> '.$data[$i]->vaccine;
$mail = new PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer();
$mail->isSMTP();
$mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = 'username@gmail.com';
$mail->Password = 'password'; //password for your Gmail account
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
$mail->Port = 587;
$mail->setFrom('username@gmail.com', 'Vaccine Alert');
$mail->addAddress('username@gmail.com', 'Vaccine');
$mail->Subject = 'Vaccine Center Found';
$mail->isHTML(true);
$mailContent = "<h1>Vaccine center details</h1>
<p>
<b>Name:</b> $name
<br>
<b>Address:</b> $address
<br>
<b>District:</b> $district
<br>
<b>Pincode:</b> $pincode
<br>
<b>Date:</b> $date
<br>
<b>Fee:</b> $fee
<br>
<b>Age:</b> $age
<br>
<b>Capacity:</b> $capacity
<br>
<b>Vaccine:</b> $vaccine
<br>
<b>Book Now: </b><a href=https://selfregistration.cowin.gov.in/>https://selfregistration.cowin.gov.in/</a>";
$mail->Body = $mailContent;
if($mail->send()){
echo '<p>';
echo 'Email has been sent';
}else{
echo '<p>';
echo 'Email could not be sent.';
echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
}
}
}
}
$repeat = strtotime("+1 day",strtotime($today));
$today = date('d-m-Y',$repeat);
}
?>
</html>
Step 4: Upload files and configure cronjob
- Upload the files to your web directory (/var/www/html/).
- Create a cron job and add below (sudo crontab -e)
- */5 * * * * IS_CRON=1 /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/vaccine.php
The cron job will run the PHP script every 5mins and sends you notification if it finds a vaccine slot available in your city. It also scans for slot in next 10 days time and not just current date.
There is a rate limit for the API, so please avoid running it every min. You can deploy multiple scripts for each district you want to monitor.
It can be work in json
not working
Updated the article with new code. There is now requirement of user agent to be sent along with API request.