wwdcc

wwdcc is a service for monitoring the Apple WWDC site for changes. When a change is detected, or when the site stops responding, wwdcc sends one or more notifications to specified email addresses and/or phone numbers via SMS.

Note that wwdcc is extremely stupid: it simply scrapes the HTML served by the WWDC site and looks for a "canary" string. If that canary string isn't found, or if it isn't surrounded by the expected tags, wwdcc will send its change notifications. As of the current version, the canary string that wwdcc looks for is "WWDC 2012. June 11-15 in San Francisco. It's the week we've all been waiting for."

Unless it is terminated, either by the user or due to a bug or some kind of system problem, wwdcc will run until it detects a change, at which point it will exit after sending its change notifications.

Notification types

wwdcc supports two types of notification.

Email

If your system has a working sendmail configuration, wwdcc can send SMTP email to a destination address. If you tell wwdcc to send email notifications, it will attempt to send an activation notification when it starts. Often, if your system's sendmail is not configured properly, this will trigger an exception, and wwdcc will quit with an error message. However, some sendmail configurations may accept the email but not deliver it properly. Debugging sendmail configurations is outside the scope of this document, but Google is your friend.

You will probably want to train your spam catcher to accept emails from wwdcc. You can do this either by whitelisting the From: address that you specify to wwdcc, or by marking the activation email sent by wwdcc when it starts as "ham."

In any case, if you start wwdcc with email notifications, and you don't see an activation email from it, check your spam folder.

SMS (via Twilio)

If you have a Twilio developer account, wwdcc can use your Twilio developer credentials to send SMS notifications. Just put your Twilio account SID and auth token in your ~/.wwdcc config file, like so:

twilio {
  accountSid = "Your Twilio Account SID here"
  authToken = "The corresponding Twilio auth token here"
}

Then use the --sms from_number,to_number option, where from_number is a valid Twilio phone number for your account. As with email notifications, wwdcc will attempt to send an activation SMS at start-up, and will exit immediately if it fails. If you've configured wwdcc properly and you have sufficient credits, you should receive an activation SMS at to_number just a few seconds after you launch it.

Note that if you don't have a paid Twilio account, you can only send SMSes to the phone number you have on file with them; if you want to send SMSes to other numbers, you'll need a paid account. Also, free Twilio accounts have limits on the number of SMSes that can be sent. It's probably best to use wwdcc with a paid Twilio account; it has not been tested extensively with the free service.

Notification events

wwdcc sends notifications in the following cases:

• When a change is detected, wwdcc will send a series of notifications (3, by default), with a delay between each (30s, by default). Once the last notification has been sent, it will exit.

• When the site is down, wwdcc will send a single notification indicating that the site is down if it does not respond to wwdccs HTTP requests twice in a row. (By default, this notification is sent after 60s of downtime.) Note that wwdcc will not continue to send notifications while the site is down, nor will it send a notification when it recovers, unless wwdcc detects that the site has changed when it comes back up.

• When started, wwdcc will send a single notification indicating that it has started monitoring the site. If you don't receive this notification, make sure wwdcc is still running and examine its logs for hints of what might have gone wrong. (The --verbose flag may be useful.)

• When terminated: if wwdcc is terminated, either by the user or due to some kind of unexpected error, wwdcc will attempt to send a single notification indicating that it's been terminated. It does so primarily to ensure that you're aware that it's no longer monitoring the site. The termination notification generally does not indicate what went wrong, but the log file should.

• In response to a USR1 signal: if you send wwdcc the USR1 signal (e.g., via kill -USR1 <pid>), wwdcc will send an "I'm-still-alive" notification. This feature is useful if you have OCD.

Note that only when a change is detected, or when it is terminated, will wwdcc quit after sending a notification. In all other cases, it will continue to monitor the site.

Running

% wwdcc --help
wwdcc - a WWDC checker

Usage: wwdcc [-v|--verbose] [-c|--config PATH] [-s|--syslog] [--daemon] [-u|--url URL] [-p|--period DELAY] [-n|--notifications NUM] [-w|--wait DELAY] [-s|--sms FROM_NUMBER,TO_NUMBER] [-e|--email FROM_EMAIL,TO_EMAIL]
  Send a notification(s) when WWDC site changes or stops responding.

Available options:
  -h,--help                Show this help text
  -v,--verbose             Verbose logging
  -c,--config PATH         Path to config file (default: "$(HOME)/.wwdcc")
  -s,--syslog              Log to syslog (default: log to stderr)
  --daemon                 Run as a daemon (implies --syslog)
  -u,--url URL             Override WWDC URL (default: "https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/")
  -p,--period DELAY        Time between pings, in seconds (default: 30)
  -n,--notifications NUM   Number of notifications to send when a change is detected (default: 3)
  -w,--wait DELAY          Time between notifications, in seconds (default: 30)
  -s,--sms FROM_NUMBER,TO_NUMBER Send SMS notifications from/to phone number, comma-delimited (default: don't send SMS notifications).
  -e,--email FROM_EMAIL,TO_EMAIL Send email notifications from/to address, comma-delimited (default: don't send email notifications).

License

wwdcc is published under the BSD 3-Clause license.

Contact

For comments or questions, please contact us.