Automate the Southwest Airlines Check-In process!

Uses a headless chrome browser and optionally emails you a screenshot of the result (hopefully a successful check-in)

• Debian/Ubuntu Installation
  • Ruby
  • Chrome
  • Chromedriver
  • Environment
• Run
• Schedule

Install ruby (2.5.1) using your preferred installer/manager. (I heavily recommend RVM)

Then run

gem install bundler
bundle install

Install latest Google Chrome

# Install latest Google Chrome
sudo apt-get install libxss1 libappindicator1 libindicator7
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i google-chrome*.deb
sudo apt-get install -f

# Install xvfb so we can run Chrome headlessly
sudo apt-get install xvfb

# Cleanup
rm google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

chromedriver is used to drive the headless browser.

chromedriver versions are very specifically tied to Google Chrome versions. To determine the correct chromedriver version to install:

1. Check your version of Google Chrome with google-chrome-stable --version
2. Scan this unorganized list of chromedriver versions. Find the closest possible version to the Google Chrome version without exceeding it.

sudo apt-get install unzip

# Install `chromedriver`. Insert the version determined above
wget -N http://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/72.0.3626.7/chromedriver_linux64.zip

# Extract and make it executable
unzip chromedriver_linux64.zip
chmod +x chromedriver

# Make it available in various PATH locations
sudo mv -f chromedriver /usr/local/share/chromedriver
sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/chromedriver /usr/local/bin/chromedriver
sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/chromedriver /usr/bin/chromedriver

# Cleanup
rm chromedriver_linux64.zip

The script relies on several Environment variables to exist. To make defining these easier, you can fill out the provided sample environment config file.

cp .env.sample .env

# Open up `.env` and follow the instructions
vi .env

To run the script:

./swa.rb

For a full list of options:

./swa.rb --help

Of course, you'll probably want to schedule the script so you can have it run at a specific time and check in for you.

If you're using cron you can easily schedule it as follows.

# Be sure to replace `someuser`, the `/path/to/*`, and the cron timing.
00 00 00 00 * (env && /path/to/ruby /path/to/swa.rb) > /home/someuser/cron.log 2>&1

Notes:

• cron loads with no knowledge about your environment. See this post on how to run ruby scripts in cron sessions. It was written with rvm in mind but can be adapted to rbenv and other tools
• The above crontab entry prints out the env and logs everything to a logfile as a useful debugging tool
• In general, you may find it useful to enable system wide cron logging as well.