Python Google Alerts

The google-alerts Python module provides an abstract interface for the Google Alerts service. Google does not provide an official API for this service, so interactions are done through web scripting.

WARNING: Your account password will be obfuscated and saved on the file system. Additionally, post-authentication, a session cookie will also be saved. These can be stolen and re-used to compromise your account. As a best practice, register a new email to manage alerts.

For detailed explanations of the library, please see the wiki.

Quick Start

Install the library:

pip install google-alerts or python setup.py install

Save your configuration:

google-alerts setup --email <your.mail@foo.com> --password 'password'

Seed your session (driver download, http://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads, do NOT use the pip package as the version is old):

google-alerts seed --driver /tmp/chromedriver --timeout 60

Create a monitor:

google-alerts create --term "hello world" --delivery 'rss' --frequency 'realtime'

List monitors:

google-alerts list

Delete a monitor:

google-alerts delete --id '89e517961a3148c7:c395b7d271b4eccc:com:en:US'

Sample Code

This sample code shows some of the range of functionality within the module:

from google_alerts import GoogleAlerts

# Create an instance
ga = GoogleAlerts('your.email@gmail.com', '**password**')

# Authenticate your user
ga.authenticate()

# List configured monitors
ga.list()

# Add a new monitor
ga.create("Hello World", {'delivery': 'RSS'})

# Modify an existing monitor
ga.modify("89e517961a3148c7:c395b7d271b4eccc:com:en:US", {'delivery': 'RSS', 'monitor_match': 'ALL'})

# Delete a monitor
ga.delete("89e517961a3148c7:c395b7d271b4eccc:com:en:US")

Example Output

Below is an example monitor:

[{
    "term": "hello world",
    "user_id": "09738342945634096720",
    "language": "en",
    "monitor_id": "89e517961a3148c7:c395b7d271b4eccc:com:en:US",
    "region": "US",
    "rss_link": "https://google.com/alerts/feeds/09738342945634096720/9663349274289663466",
    "delivery": "RSS",
    "match_type": "BEST"
}]

Features

• Add new monitors (RSS or Mail)
• Modify existing monitors
• Delete monitors by ID or term
• List all monitors with details

Changelog

05-09-20

• Bugfix: Adjusted the seeding process to use Stackoverflow in order to handle initial Google authentication to bypass bot checks

11-20-19

• Change: Captured all results by default instead of best

07-15-19

• Bugfix: Handle issues in exception definition
• Bugfix: Provide alert_frequency with a default option if not supplied

07-14-19

• Change: Wrap state parsing functions and have them raise exception on failures
• Bugfix: Account for state changed pushed by Google, breaking all processing

05-23-19

• Feature: Add a new command line argument to allow a user to specify a seed timeout time

11-11-18

• Feature: Add a new command line argument to seed a session through the browser
• Change: Added python version detection to the manage script as well

10-13-18

• Feature: Detect when user changes between Python versions during setup
• Bugfix: Setup process appears to finally be bug-free, screw python2 support

07-10-18

• Feature: Added the ability to set the frequency when creating alerts
• Bugfix: Fixed frequency settings when using the mail delivery method

05-30-18

• Change: Explicitly detect when a CAPTCHA is being thrown

05-28-18

• Feature: Take advantage of the config file concept inside of the class
• Feature: Authenticate users with a session file if it's available
• Change: Tell Chrome to avoid using Javascript so we get the old form

05-25-18

• Change: Added headers to all calls to look like less of a bot
• Bugfix: Wrapped a problem area when inspecting the forms in a page
• Bugfix: Handled setup error for Python3

04-29-18

• Feature: Allow users to setup exact match queries
• Change: Added support for Python3
• Bugfix: Removed extra calls causing an error in the decrypt process

04-26-18

• Feature: Added a command line utility to the code for easy testing
• Bugfix: Removed clobbering error inside of delete routine