Texas State Park Auto Reserve

An application that automates making Texas State Park reservations through the Texas State Park website.

Why does this application exist?

I made this app due to the high volume of people making reservations to visit Texas State Parks during the global pandemic, which has caused the parks to reach daily capacity. Sometimes reservations are cancelled, but the Texas State Park website does not have a notification system to let you know.

Rather than manually checking back in on the website every few hours and potentially missing an opportunity to book a coveted slot that someone gives up, I built this application to check the website for me for any openings on specific days I want to book and if a slot opens up it will reserve a spot for me.

Can other people use the application?

Yes, though I did make this with a specific reservation in mind, in theory this should work for any Texas Park reservation through the above website.

Fill in your personal request information in a .env file, following the sample.env file, make sure you have login credentials for the Texas State Park website, and run the application.

Run the app:

1. Copy reservation_details.sample.json to reservation_details.json and fill in all of the fields.
2. Copy sample.env to .env and fill in your Texas State Park username and password. This will be used to make your reservation.
3. Run the following commands to run the application:

python3 -m venv ENV
source ENV/bin/activate
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
python3 app.py

# run this command to exit venv activate mode and return to regular shell environment
deactivate

Values for reservation_details.json

There are limited options supported at this time. Some options will have some defaults that you can edit after your reservation is made.

Key	Default Values (type)	Description
destination	"" (string)	The Texas State Park you want to visit - should be the first result when searching on the website.
interest	"" (string)	Options: camping or day pass
arrival_date	"MM/DD/YYYY" (string)	First day you want to visit, format is important: MM/DD/YYYY
days_of_stay	0 (integer)	Number of days you want to stay
number_of_vehicles	1 (integer)	how many vehicles
type_of_vehicle	"" (string)	type of vehicle. options: car, truck, suv, van
number_of_adults	0 (integer)	how many adults are going
number_of_children	0 (integer)	how many children are going
wait_for_opening	false (bool)	continuously check for an opening and auto book when one is available
camp_site_selection	empty strings object	Camp Site Options
camp_site_selection.type	"" (string)	Camp Site type. Supported options: tent
camp_site_selection.preference	"any" (string)	Camp Site preference. Supported options: electric, primitive, any
day_pass_selection	empty strings object	Day Pass Options
day_pass_selection.preferences	[ "either" ] (array)	length should match days_of_stay. values are: morning, afternoon, either
credit_card	empty strings object	credit card information for booking

What is the application doing exactly?

I use selenium web driver for python to navigate to the Texas State Park website, login, and go through the reservation steps. If the days the requestor want to go to the park are available, then I look at the requestor's preferences for morning or afternoon visitation and make the reservation, including payment.

If the dates are already booked then the application continuously checks for availability on the requested days until either, a) an available spot opens up, then it books the opening, or b) stops after the requestor's visitation date has passed.

Future Features

"...a work is never truly completed [...] but abandoned..." Paul Valéry

Nice-to-have features:

• add features for reserving more camp grounds. currently only tent camp option is available
• add json value validation for reservation_details.json and validate against website limits
• replace time.sleep with WebDriverWait - better practice with selenium to wait for an element than an arbitrary sleep time
• add deploy code for application so that people do not have to run the code locally on their computer
• add testing

Questions or feedback?

Feel free to submit a github issue or pull request