Building a no-code app to send daily Covid-19 data
Tags: nocode, tutorial, visualdevelopment
Published: 2020-06-21 22:56:14

---
title: Building a no-code app to send daily Covid-19 data
published: true
date: 2020-06-19 21:18:22 UTC
tags: Nocode, tutorial, visualdevelopment
canonical_url: https://maxkatz.org/2020/06/19/building-a-no-code-app-to-send-daily-covid-19-data/
---

I live in [Contra Costa County](https://www.contracosta.ca.gov/) in the San Francisco Bay Area. The county has setup a [web site](https://www.coronavirus.cchealth.org/) with Covid-19 information for its residents. The main page shows key Covid-19 data updated daily. I have been visiting this page almost daily. This is how it looks for Friday, June 19, 2020:

![](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/nocode-ccc-keynumbers.png?w=1024)<figcaption>Covid-19 data for June 19, 2020</figcaption>

I wanted to build an application that would email me this data every day. To continue [my no-code journey](https://dev.to/maxkatz/parabola-watson-nlu-news-api-and-twilio-tools-i-used-to-build-a-no-code-application-4k3k) I built a no-code application that sends me a daily email with the latest data. I didn’t need to write a single line of code!

These are the tools I used to build the application:

- [Simplescraper](https://simplescraper.io/) – to scrap data from the county web site and turn it into an API
- [Parabola](http://parabola.io) – build a flow to invoke the API and send the email

This is how the application flow looks in Parabola:

![](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/nocode-ccc-flow.png?w=1024)<figcaption>Parabola flow</figcaption>

Let’s review the application flow.

## API Import step

The API Import step allows to invoke any external API. In this application I invoke an API for a custom scraper I built to scrape the county web site for latest Covid-19 data. [Simplescraper](http://simplescraper.io) is an easy-to-use tool that allows to scrape a web site and create an API for it.

![](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/nocode-ccc-scrape-api.png?w=1024)<figcaption>Simplescraper API</figcaption>

This is how the JSON response from the API looks:

```
[{ "current\_hospital": "26", "index": 1, "total\_cases": "2,111", "total\_deaths": "55", "total\_tested": "53,049", "url": "https://www.coronavirus.cchealth.org/", "url\_uid": 1 }]
```

Now invoking Simplescraper API in the API Import step:

![](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/nocode-ccc-api_import.png?w=1024)<figcaption>API Import step</figcaption>

We are almost ready to send the email. Before we do that we only need to add the email address.

## Add Columns step

In this step a new column is added with the email address where to send the email.

![](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/nocode-ccc-addcolumns.png?w=1024)<figcaption>Add Columns step</figcaption>

Next step is sending the email.

## Send Emails step

In the last step I’m using Parabola built-in Send Emails step to send the email, creating the email message using data from the API response:

![](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/nocode-ccc-sendemails.png?w=1024)<figcaption>Send Emails step</figcaption>

You can test any flow right away. You can also schedule a flow to run periodically.

## Scheduling

I scheduled this flow to run once a day (weekdays) at 12pm PT:

![](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/nocode-ccc-schedule.png?w=852)<figcaption>Flow schedule</figcaption>

I get an email that loos like this:

![](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/nocode-ccc-email.png?w=898)<figcaption>Covid-19 daily email</figcaption>

## Summary

It’s incredible how fast you can build this application using no-code tools. My next step is to create a video that shows how to build this application. I also want to modify the application to include data from the previous day to get a better idea which direction the numbers are changing.

I did have to spend a little extra time learning how to use Simplescraper. It’s mostly due to the county web site not having a good structure. I had to set CSS selectors manually for Simplescraper. In general you can just click on an element on a page and Simplescraper picks it up automatically. This approach also worked but required a few extra steps in Parabola (the API response had to be cleaned and formatted). I reached out to Simplescraper support (which is great!) and they helped me setup a more elegant scraper using CSS selectors.