Sked Parser

Parses Ostfalia University sked timetables into a JSON format than can be used inside SplusEins.

Installation & Usage

1. Install python>=3.9, git and pip
2. Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/SplusEins/sked_parser.git and cd sked_parser.
3. Install the tool with pip from the cloned folder: python -m pip install -e ..
4. Copy secrets.example.yaml into secrets.yaml and fill it with your Ostfalia credentials.
5. Add sked_parser/config.yaml with the current timetable URLs. See below for syntax reference.
6. Run the tool by executing sked-parser. It'll then create the desired timetables.json.

config.yaml syntax reference

This is how the file looks like:

plans:
    - url: https://stundenplan.ostfalia.de/e/ # Required, the "overview" URL which directly lists the single timetables for that faculty
      faculty: Elektrotechnik # Required, faculty name which will be displayed to the user on spluseins.de
    - url: https://stundenplan.ostfalia.de/i/Semester/Semester-Liste/
      faculty: Informatik
      type: "list" # Optional, defaults to 'graphical'. Only needs to be specified as 'list' if the timetables are in list form or as 'csv' if the timetables are stored as CSV.
    - url: https://stundenplan.ostfalia.de/v/stundenplan/bee/
      faculty: Versorgungstechnik
      shorthand_syntax: True # Optional, defaults to false. See section shorthand syntax further below.
current_sem: "ss21" # Current semester string that will be appended to the IDs (to have unique IDs for each semester)
timetable_blacklist:
    - "blacklisted timetable name or URL"

Refer to the SplusEins Documentation for details on the resulting JSON format.

Command line options

usage: sked-parser [-h] [-c CONFIG_FILE] [-s SECRETS_FILE] [-o OUT_FILE]

• -c CONFIG_FILE: Path to the main yaml configuration file. Defaults to the provided sked_parser/config.yaml.
• -s SECRETS_FILe Path to the YAML secrets file containing Ostfalia user and password (Default: secrets.yaml in current directory)
• -o OUT_FILE Where to store the resulting json file. Can be specified multiple times (Default: timetables.json in current directory)

It's also possible to specify the Ostfalia credentials via OSTFALIA_USER and OSTFALIA_PASS environment variables.

How it works

The single timetable are scraped from each specified timetable overview page. The link of that timetable (called skedPath in SplusEins) and its description/label are then stored and further processed:

Label optimization

The label is optimized by removing any faculty names, duplicated white spaces and any current semester strings (like 4. Semester or - 5. Sem.). Optionally it's possible to only use the abbreviation of the course name:

Shorthand syntax optimization

If the timetables of the current faculty are listed as long form of course (Abbreviation) - additional info, it is possible to set shorthand_syntax to true in the config.yaml. In that case the tool will remove the long form of course and only keep Abbreviation - additional info to keep the label as short as possible in the UI. For example the faculty "Versorgungstechnik" uses course names like Bio- und Umwelttechnik (BEE) - PO18, which will be simplified to BEE - PO18 when shorthand_syntax is set to true for that faculty / overview page.

Semester extraction

The semester of that timetable is retrieved by parsing the stored description with a regex searching for a number followed by any non-alphanumeric character and then Sem. See the tests for extract_semester for all allowed/possible variants.

Credits

This package was created with Cookiecutter and the audreyr/cookiecutter-pypackage project template.