Sending text message alerts using Google Voice

If we want to continue to leverage nflgame's ability to gather statistics from games currently being played, the next logical step is to devise a way to send alerts. Alerts are typically sent via email or text message (SMS)—in this tutorial we will focus on sending the latter kind of alert.

Before moving on, we have to outline the dependencies required in order to use nflgame.alert to send texts via Google Voice.

First, you'll need to have a Google Voice account, which is used to send text messages. Signing up for one is free (sending text messages is also free). Second, you'll need to install pygooglevoice which is used to talk to Google Voice. To install pygooglevoice, download the latest release (called "Python source code"), then extract it. You then have to run python2 setup.py install in the directory where setup.py is located. (i.e., where you extracted the downloaded file.)

Finally, you'll need at least version 1.0.6 of nflgame, which is the first version to contain the nflgame.alert module.

(Warning: Google Voice caps the number of texts you can send in some interval. The wisdom of the Internet seems to report 200 text messages in 24 hours, but this is merely a rough estimate. Sending a lot of text messages in rapid succession could also prevent you from sending more. In lieu of Google Voice, nflgame.alert also provides a way of sending SMS messages using an SMTP server such as your GMail account—but you'll need to know the cell phone carrier of the recipient. There is more explanation and examples in nflgame.alert's API documentation.)

The nflgame.alert module

There are only two functions that you need from the nflgame.alert module: nflgame.alert.google_voice_login and nflgame.alert.sms. The first function only needs to be called once and allows your Python program to log into and access your Google Voice account. The second function sends an SMS message to any phone number.

So how about an example?

>>> import nflgame.alert
>>> nflgame.alert.google_voice_login('YOUR GMAIL ADDRESS', 'YOUR PASSWORD')
>>> nflgame.alert.sms('YOUR PHONE NUMBER', 'Hello, world!')

If you run the above code after adding in your information, you should receive a text message momentarily with a message that reads Hello, world!. Cool, eh?

Also, if you noticed—we didn't do anything with NFL statistics! You could use nflgame.alert to send alerts for any reason whatsoever. But in this tutorial, we'll stick to NFL updates.

Getting live game scores every 10 minutes

Back in the days before Digital Video Recorders were prevalent, if you missed an NFL game, you were probably out of luck. In my circle of friends, if someone was missing a Patriots game, someone else who got to see it would often send text messages periodically updating the friend who couldn't watch the game.

Now we can do that automatically with the nflgame.live and nflgame.alert modules. (Note: Please see the wiki page on the nflgame.live for help on using it. Notably, it requires that pytz is installed.)

For instance, this example will check for game scores every ten minutes (600 seconds) and send you a text message with the scores of every game that is being played: (Remember to fill in your phone number and Google Voice account information.)

import nflgame
import nflgame.alert
import nflgame.live

phone = 'YOUR PHONE NUMBER'
email = 'YOUR GOOGLE EMAIL ADDRESS'
passwd = 'YOUR GOOGLE PASSWORD'

def cb(active, completed, diffs):
    scores = []
    for g in active:
        fmt = '{0} ({1}) vs {2} ({3})'
        scores.append(fmt.format(g.home, g.score_home, g.away, g.score_away))
    msg = '\n'.join(scores)
    nflgame.alert.sms(phone, msg)

nflgame.live.run(cb, active_interval=600)

We could also adapt our example to send a special text declaring a winner whenever a game has been completed:

import nflgame
import nflgame.alert
import nflgame.live

phone = 'YOUR PHONE NUMBER'
email = 'YOUR GOOGLE EMAIL ADDRESS'
passwd = 'YOUR GOOGLE PASSWORD'

def cb(active, completed, diffs):
    for g in completed:
        msg = '{0} beats {1}! Final score: {2} to {3}'
        msg = msg.format(g.winner, g.loser, g.score_home, g.score_away)
        nflgame.alert.sms(phone, msg)

    scores = []
    for g in active:
        fmt = '{0} ({1}) vs {2} ({3})'
        scores.append(fmt.format(g.home, g.score_home, g.away, g.score_away))
    msg = '\n'.join(scores)
    nflgame.alert.sms(phone, msg)

nflgame.live.run(cb, active_interval=600)

Since games only show up in completed once and never again, you will only get one text message for each game that finishes.