FINNscraper

A simple finn.no scraper, written in Go. Give it your email, an URL and your given interval - and the program will check for new ads and notify you when new one comes.

This is better than the exisiting "Saved searches", provided by Finn - as it can check and notify you as often as every minute, but perhaps more practically: every 30 or 60 minutes.

List of features:

• Set scraping interval to be as low as 1 minute.
• Search multiple URLs.
• Reload configuration without interrupting or re-building the binary.
• Set your custom User-Agent string.
• Define a custom template, in your own language and phrasing.

Getting started

First: Use the mobile site provided by finn.no.

Second: A provided URL should include search.html, e.g.

http://m.finn.no/bap/forsale/search.html?price_to=10000&sub_category=1.93.3215

Which is a search for all computers, less than 10 000 NOK.

Copy the scraper.conf.sample and add your own parameters. It should be pretty self explanatory.

Start the script by:

$ ./finnscraper scraper.conf

Updating the configuration / Using SIGHUP

If you update the config-file, you don't need to stop the script. You can just use the PID and reload it by sending the SIGHUP signal.

First find the PID:

$ pidof finnscraper
1692

Then use this PID to send SIGHUP:

$ kill -HUP 1692

Building and installing

You need Go. Instructions for building and installing are found here. You will need Go >= 1.1. Please check this guide if your OS does not provide this version.

Then you build the binary by first getting the dependencies:

$ go get

And then building the project:

$ go build scraper.go

Done!