Overview

Use this script to find available slots for you US visa appointment on https://ais.usvisa-info.com/.

Their website uses cookies for authentication, so there are two modes of operation for this script:

• Obtain authentication cookie;
• Check available slots.

Once a new slot is found, you should receive an SMS (you'll need to create a free Twilio account).

Authentication

I tried many different things and hacks to log in to the website in a truly "script" way - including services to bypass captchas, imitating "human" behavior, patching the driver etc. None of that worked.

The only thing that works is a Selenium driver which actually goes through the auth flow. Somehow it only works on the machine you've previously used for manual authentication (likely your personal laptop) - I guess they remember some fingerprint or w/e.

Note that auth cookie is valid for about 4 hours last time I checked. So you have to run "auth" mode every couple of hours, and you can run "check" mode however often you like. "Every 5 minutes" worked fine for me so far.

Operation modes

You may want to either run both auth and check on your laptop, or split them in some way. This is useful if you want to run check on a remote server which is only 24/7 and can monitor slots while your personal machine is turned off.

Auth mode:

python main.py auth

Check mode (will try to auth if you set AUTO_REFRESH_AUTH=1):

python main.py

All on personal machine

Run "check" mode on your laptop with AUTO_REFRESH_AUTH=1. It will of course only check for new slots while your machine is awake.

auth on personal machine, check on a dedicated server

Run "auth" mode on your laptop, export cookie to a remote server and run "check" mode there with AUTO_REFRESH_AUTH=0. This will give you slightly better "check" coverage (assuming your server runs 24/7 - unlike your personal machine).

Setting up

Prerequisites

1. Clone this repo

git clone https://github.com/arseniy-panfilov/usvisa-check-slots.git

2. Get yourself python 3.7, e.g. using pyenv;
3. Install script requirements:

pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Download Chrome driver for Selenium. Make sure driver version matches your browser version (you can find it in Chrome -> About Chrome):
5. You might need to right click -> open on the driver if you're on Mac to pass the security check;
6. In the repo folder, create an .env file:

cp .env.example .env

7. Provide values for all the env variables (see description below);

Env variables

• ACCOUNT_ID: group ID from the website. You can see it in the url, e.g. https://ais.usvisa-info.com/en-ca/niv/schedule/<ACCOUNT_ID>/continue_actions
• CHROMEDRIVER_PATH: path to the Chrome driver, e.g. /usr/local/bin/chromedriver or wherever you place it;
• USVISA_COOKIE_PATH: where to store auth cookie, can be any location e.g. cookie/cookie.txt;
• USVISA_USER / USVISA_PASSWORD: credentials to login on https://ais.usvisa-info.com/en-ca/niv/users/sign_in
• USVISA_CURRENT_DATE: date in YYYY-MM-DD format. If you already have an appointment, put its date here so that bot doesn't bother you with irrelevant dates;
• AUTO_REFRESH_AUTH: whether to automatically refresh auth cookie. Set to 1 if you're running everything on your personal laptop; set to 0 if you're running check mode on a VPS or something like that - it won't be able to obtain auth cookie anyway.

Twilio configuration:

• TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID
• TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN
• TWILIO_TO_NUM
• TWILIO_FROM_NUM

Tweaking the code

You may want to modify cities list in src.run.CITIES_TO_CHECK. I think Montreal doesn't actually take appointments now, and I had most luck with Ottawa.

Running

1. Try running it manually:

python main.py

2. Make the script run every 5 minutes or so. Depending on your OS it can be cron for *nix, launchd for macOS etc.
3. (Optional) if you want to run check on a remote server, you'll need to export the auth cookie there. So you should end with running this on your personal machine every hour:

python main.py auth

and then export it to your dedicated server, e.g.:

scp cookie/cookie.txt yourvps:/path/to/cookie.txt

On the server itself, repeat all the steps above, but make sure to set AUTO_REFRESH_AUTH=0 in the .env file. This mode also doesn't require USVISA_USER / USVISA_PASSWORD so you can leave them empty.

Example script to export cookie:

#!/bin/bash

venv/bin/python main.py
scp cookie/cookie.txt <YOUR_SSH>:/home/apps/usvisa/cookie/cookie.txt
echo "Cookie exported"

Setting up launchd on a macOS machine

Create a .plist file for the service, e.g.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
    "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.anon.usvisa-watcher</string>
    <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
    <string>/Users/anon/dev/usvisa/</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>./export-cookie.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>1800</integer>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/usvisa.log</string>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/usvisa.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Then run:

cp com.custom.usvisa-watcher.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.anon.usvisa-watcher.plist
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.anon.usvisa-watcher.plist

Make sure it's added:

➜  ~ launchctl list | grep usvisa
-	0	com.anon.usvisa-watcher

To run immediately:

launchctl kickstart gui/501/com.anon.usvisa-watcher