This script scrapes the https://recreation.gov website for campsite availabilities.
$ python camping.py --start-date 2018-07-20 --end-date 2018-07-23 --parks 232448 232450 232447 232770
❌ TUOLUMNE MEADOWS: 0 site(s) available out of 148 site(s)
🏕 LOWER PINES: 11 site(s) available out of 73 site(s)
❌ UPPER PINES: 0 site(s) available out of 235 site(s)
❌ BASIN MONTANA CAMPGROUND: 0 site(s) available out of 30 site(s)
You can also read from stdin. Define a JSON file (see example in campsites/) and then use it like this:
$ python3 camping.py --nights 2 --parks_file campsites/park_ids.json
You'll want to put this script into a 5 minute crontab. You could also grep the output for the success emoji (🏕) and then do something in response, like notify you that there is a campsite available. See the "Twitter Notification" section below.
If you're flexible on travel dates, you can search for a specific number of contiguous nights within a wide range of dates. This is useful for campgrounds in high-demand areas (like Yosemite Valley) or during peak season when openings are rare. Simply specify the --nights argument. For example, to search for a 5-day reservation in the month of June 2020 at Chisos Basin:
$ python camping.py --start-date 2020-06-01 --end-date 2020-06-30 --nights 5 234038
There are campsites available from 2020-06-01 to 2020-06-30!!!
🏕 CHISOS BASIN (BIG BEND) (234038): 13 site(s) available out of 62 site(s)
What you'll want to do is go to https://recreation.gov and search for the campground you want. Click on it in the search sidebar. This should take you to a page for that campground, the URL will look like https://www.recreation.gov/camping/campgrounds/<number>. That number is the park ID.
@banool wrote this in Python 3.7 but tested it as working with 3.5 and 3.6 also.
python3 -m venv myvenv
source myvenv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r requirements.txt
# You're good to go!
This code is formatted using black and isort:
black -l 80 --py36 camping.py
isort camping.py
Note: black only really supports 3.6+ so watch out!
Feel free to submit pull requests, or look at the original: https://github.com/bri-bri/yosemite-camping
If you want to be notified about campsite availabilities via Twitter (they're the only API out there that is actually easy to use), you can do this:
- Make an app via Twitter. It's pretty easy, go to: https://apps.twitter.com/app/new.
- Change the values in
twitter_credentials.pyto match your key values. - Pipe the output of your command into
notifier.py. See below for an example.
$ python3 camping.py --nights 2 --parks 233116 | python3 simple-notifier.py tweet
$ python3 camping.py --nights 2 --parks_file campsites/park_ids.json | python3 simple-notifier.py tweet
Optionally, you can tag a user at the end, e.g. python3 ... tweet @EmpedadorBeto
You'll want to make the app on another account (like a bot account), not your own, so you get notified when the tweet goes out.
They changed the API. There is this search endpoint that enables you to see how many sites are available in a date range, but this wouldn't be compatible with the --nights feature.
https://www.recreation.gov/api/search?fq=asset_id%3A231946&start=0&start_date=2020-07-14T00%3A00%3A00.000Z&end_date=2020-07-17T00%3A00%3A00.000Z&include_unavailable=true
"availability": "available",
"availability_counts": {
"Available": 27
},
- Integrate with our Twitter notifications ✅
- If no start or end date given, then default to today + 6 months as time range ✅
- Output which dates are available for given site numbers ✅
- 1.0 - update the static file to read from with all campground ids of interest. 2.0 - read campground ids from Google Doc instead of static file
- Half Dome permits: https://www.recreation.gov/api/permits/234652
- What inspired the original by @banool: https://github.com/bri-bri/yosemite-camping
- Additional method of finding park IDs: https://pastudan.github.io/national-parks/) from @pastudan