Job Notify

jobnotify is a command-line utility to help alert you to new job postings.

Installation

The easiest way to install this project is via pip:

$ pip install jobnotify

Alternatively, you can clone the repository to get the source code.

$ git clone https://github.com/matthewmckenna/jobnotify.git
$ cd jobnotify
$ pip install .

This will ensure that the application is set up correctly.

Prerequisites

Indeed

1. Sign up for an Indeed Publisher account and log in.
2. Click on the Job Search API tab. Under Sample Request section you will find your publisher ID. Take note of this key, as you will need it later.

Gmail

To receive notifications via email, you will need a Gmail account to send the emails.

While it may be possible to use an existing Gmail account to both send and receive the emails, this option has not been tested. This option also comes with a downside in that your password to this account will be stored in plaintext on your machine. If this is your primary account this is certainly not desirable.

I recommend setting up a new account to send the notification emails. This is a quick process and the account can be used in future for other notification tasks. Now, we will quickly set up an App password for this application.

1. When you have set up your account, click on your avatar in the top-right, and navigate to My Account.
2. Under Sign-in & security click on the Signing into Google link.
3. Click on App passwords.
4. Generate a password and take note of this. This will be needed when configuring jobnotify.

Slack

If you wish to receive job notifications via Slack, then please follow the instructions in Slack Configuration.

Configuration

Your configuration file for jobnotify will be located in ~/.jobnotify, and will be named jobnotify.config.

The quickest way to get a skeleton configuration file is by running the application with the -c or --config flag as follows:

$ jobnotify --config

The will set-up the .jobnotify application data directory in your home directory.

You will need to edit the jobnotify.config file and fill out valid values. Terms in brackets [] are sections. There are a number of required fields for each section, detailed below:

[indeed] section

[email] section

Optional parameters

These optional keys are included under the email section.

[slack] section

More detail can be found in the Slack Configuration document.

[notify_via] section

The values for the keys below should be true or false. Note that at least one option must be set true below.

Usage

Before running jobnotify, make sure that you have followed the instructions under the Prerequisites and Configuration sections above.

To run simply execute the following:

$ jobnotify

To run this application automatically, one can use a cron job. To edit your crontab file, execute the following:

$ crontab -e

Say for example, you wished to run the application four times a day, at 09:00, 13:00, 18:00 and 22:00. Your crontab entry would resemble the following:

* 9,13,18,22 * * * /home/matthew/miniconda3/envs/jn/bin/jobnotify

In the example above, note that I have provided the full path to the jobnotify application. In the case above, I had pip install``ed ``jobnotify to a new virtual environment named jn. To find the full path to the application you can run:

$ which jobnotify

from your terminal.

Options

If you wish to manually run the application, there are some command-line options available, detailed below:

Troubleshooting

If you encounter any issues, please carry out the following:

1. Run the application with the -v or --verbose flag. This will create a log file in your current directory named .jobnotify.log.
2. Capture any output from your terminal and add to a text file.

Create an issue and attach both files.