Automated Monitoring of NC DMV Reservation Availability

DMVs within reasonable distance of where I live are always completely booked, so I made this tool to help me spot when someone cancelled their appointment so I could snag it.

Since the tool was made for self-use only, currently it's hard-coded to only checks for the appointment type of 1st time Driver License Test (over 18).

I've used it to spot availability slot twice after running it for a few hours, and secured my reservation. :)

Table of Contents

Quick Start
- Installation
- Running
How it works
Continuous Monitoring
- On your local machine
- GitHub Actions
Thoughts
Links

Quick Start

Installation

# install google-chrome / google-chrome-stable, and
# install chromedriver with your favorite package manager and put it in your $PATH
brew install chromedriver
# or sudo pacman -S chromedriver

# python3.12+ required
pipx install ncdmv-reservation

Running

$ ncdmv-driver-license-office-availability | jq | tee ncdmv.json
[
  {
    "is_reservable": true,
    "office_name": "Aberdeen",
    "street_address": "521 S. Sandhills Blvd., Aberdeen, NC",
    "zip_code": "28315"
  },
  {
    "is_reservable": true,
    "office_name": "Ahoskie",
    "street_address": "242 N.C. 42 W., Ahoskie, NC",
    "zip_code": "27910"
  },
  {
    "is_reservable": true,
    "office_name": "Albemarle",
    "street_address": "611 Concord Road, Albemarle, NC",
    "zip_code": "28001"
  },
  {
    "is_reservable": true,
    "office_name": "Andrews",
    "street_address": "1440 Main St., Andrews, NC",
    "zip_code": "28901"
  },
  {
    "is_reservable": true,
    "office_name": "Asheboro",
    "street_address": "2754 U.S. 220 Business South, Asheboro, NC",
    "zip_code": "27205"
  },
  ...
]

Filtering for the DMV office you're interested in with jq:

$ <ncdmv.json jq '.[] | select(.office_name == "Raleigh West") | .is_reservable' -r
false
# so it's completely booked (the `Raleigh West` office)

How it works

ncdmv-driver-license-office-availability spins up a chrome instance to click through the very user friendly DMV site, scrap the page, and convert it to structured JSON.

Use the -H, --no-headless option to see the chrome instance in action.

Continuous Monitoring

On your local machine

I found this approach more convenient for me.

dmv () {
	ncdmv-driver-license-office-availability | jq '.[] | select(.office_name == "Raleigh West") | .is_reservable' -r

}

# replace `say` if you're not on macOS
# you can change the frequency of the check by changing the `sleep` duration
dmv_monitor() {
	(while :; do [[ $(dmv) == true ]] && say 'go to dmv and reserve now'; sleep 60; done)&
}

# start monitoring every 60s, in the background
# don't close your terminal tab :)
dmv_monitor

# to stop it, run
# kill %1
# or just close the terminal tab. :)

GitHub Actions

Email notification via sendgrid if the DMV office of your choice is reservable.

The workflow file

Thoughts

After I wrote this I remembered that I should check GitHub first to see if someone else has already done it.

Fortunately, their solutions are outdated, and I did not reinvent the wheel. :)