Package: yadc
YADC: Yet Another (DVSA) cancellations CheckerYADC is yet another checker for driving cancellations in the UK.why another?:Because all the code I found on github doesn't work with the
latest anti-bot protections on dvsa.  Besides, it was all rather
spaghettified.  YADC is, I hope a little cleaner and more modular.  It should
be easier to modify down the line.why a bot?:Because I can't get a driving test.  Note that Ido not thinkthis solution is remotely ideal.  See the appeal below.will you maintain this?:Not if I get a test and pass.  But hopefully it
should be a better framework for the next generation to come along and do the
same.FeaturesYADC is:cleanly written and object-orientedneat.  We use a context manager to handle the browser; I'm pretty proud of
that.easy to extendeasy (hopefully) to get around the next rubbish DVSA put uppretty immune to blocking (thanks to TOR)pretty colourful, too. We have coloured logs (thanks tocoloredlogs),
spinners (thanks toHalo) and well-formatted output. When things go wrong,
we save a traceback, a screenshot, and the html the browser was seeing.YADC is not:my idea.  I started withthis repoand extensively rewrote the logic from
the ground up.  I got the idea of the poisson sleep fromthis repo, although
I didn't take any code directly from anything.infalliblecapable of booking tests for you (thanks to @chrishat34 it will reserve them, though).always going to workproperly supportedInstallationWith pipYADCis now deployed on PyPi, so you can justpython3-mpipinstallYADCHowever, since every individual setup is going to vary somewhat,YADCis only
a library.  You still have to decide how to use it.  A starting point is
provided in themain.pyof this repository: save it somewhere, edit it, and
off you go.  A dummy CLI is provided which will merely direct you to do this ;)If anyone wishes to write a proper CLI I will happily merge it.Note that if you want captcha defeating you need to downloadbusterand unzip it
somewhere you can get at from yourmain.py.  Likewise if you wanttor, it
needs to be installed and executable as the user running your `main.py`.From git (for development).clone the reporunpoetry installrunpoetry shell(optional) to downloadbusterand unzip it.(optional) installtorand ensure it can be run as a user.editmain.pywith your setup.runpython -m yadc.mainFAQChrome/Chromedriver/Tor doesn't start!You need to provide either thecompletepath to the executable (that's something like"/usr/bin/chromedriver"orr"C:\Program Files\Chrome\chrome.exe "")including any suffix it might have; or you need to make sure that the
executables are in your$PATH/%PATH%.  Have a look inmain.pyto see
where they should go. Windows users: I'm very sorry your operating system
makes this so difficult, it wasn't me who decided to put aspacein the path
to further confuse things.Tor doesn't connect to the internet.This isprobablya bug in your
environmentifyou have correctly passed the tor executable.  If you
haven't, do so.  Verify that one and only one tor process is running (for some
reason multiple tor processes will fail on Windows at least), using Task
Manager (Micro$oft Windoze) orpkill(*nix) to stop any which are left over
by mistake.  If you can't get it working, try manually: start tor with/path/to/tor --SocksPort 48059and then start chrome with/path/to/chrome --proxy-server="socks4://localhost:48059".  If this fails the problem is in
your installation: if it succeeds and you can't get it running, open an issue
and I'll have a look at it.  Note that this code has been confirmed working on
both Windows and Linux in the past, but it is not in active development, and
it's possible things have broken since.I don't know where to start!If you can't make sense of the instructions
in this readme, open an issue and explain what's confusing.  That way I can
improve the readme :DI got this error when it was running!Note that errors when running are
perfectly normal.  YADC gets detected eventually; sooner or later it will
probably stop working entirely.  See my appeal to the DVSA below.  If you want
to open an issue with the error, make sure you include the error dump from the
errors dir (the.txt, the.html, and the.png).  You are strongly
advised to sanitise the filesfirstin case they contain personal data.UsageCurrently you have to be at the computer to do anything.  You will see the
browser moving, which should help.  If you want to interact with it manually,
hitCtrl-zin the terminal to stop execution of the script, and the browser
is yours (note that manual interaction increases the chance of being detected
by some anti-bot measures).  If the script finds a test it will notify you
with the notify function you set (the default is just `print`, so do set
something more appropriate!  A nice service is `pushover`, though it does have
a once-off payment).  If the script does find a test it will blockRoadmap / Good first PRsWork inundetected_browser.pywould make it possible to useundetected_chromedriver.  A PR implementing this would be welcome.We have no cli.  That's probably not an issue, but it would be trivial
to add one, e.g. with click.Use in other projectsYADC has been written to be reusable.  Seedocs/reusingfor
pointers.Appeal to DVSAThe current situation is a mess.  Because of the pandemic, there are no tests
for months; that is not your fault.  So we are all forced either to wait for
months, or to book a last-minute cancellation. But we can't do that, because
all the companies using bots to find tests snatch them up.  So we all use
those companies; and then DVSA's website becomes even more useless.  There
are twoeasysolutions you could adopt:Add an auto-booking with queue feature to the website.  Once a test is
booked you get to specify criteria for a better test, and enter in a queue.
When you rise to the top of that queue, you get whatever matches reserved
for you.  In other words, implement the third-party solution yourself.  I
would gladly pay a reasonable sum for it.  And the third-party firms will
go out of business and stop spamming your website.Add an API, and charge for access.  That way the third parties will use the
API.  You can release tests to the API after x minutes to give humans a
chance as well.  You can go after anyone who tries to use a bot to get
round the limit, and providing your API is reasonable, nobody will mind.Instead of these, you make the already useless website even harder to use.
Bot protection is an uphill battle.  So is bot developing.  The only people
who profit from this are companies like google (via chrome/chromium).