gAlerts

About

This project is the ultimate solution for automating the creation of google alerts for automating targeted leads. It allows users to manually log into their account via browser launched with provided syntax from terminal, then run the program which connects to the browser via Chrome DevTools Protocol and executes the script in the browser.

Installation and Setup

If Node.js isn’t installed yet:

• Go to https://nodejs.org
• Download the LTS version (recommended for most users)
• Follow the default installation procedures (hit next a lot)

Install dependencies:

npm install playwright csv-parse

Install TypeScript + ts-node to run .ts files:

npm install --save-dev typescript ts-node @types/node

Create directory for playwright profile:

• Linux

mkdir -p ~/.config/playwright-profile

• Windows

mkdir C:\playwright-profile

Usage

• If desired, add any additional site endpoints where queries will be applied to the sites file in the data folder

• Enter data into Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc and export the final product to a CSV file in the data folder called alerts.csv

• Ensure the columns are in the following order left to right on the first line:

  • query
  • frequency
  • howMany

• The CSV result of the columns will look like query,frequency,howMany

Data Options

• query
  • Typical Google search query that supports any advanced operators

• frequency
  • a: "As-it-happens"
  • d: "At most once a day"
  • w: "At most once a week"

• howMany
  • best: "Only the best results"
  • all: "All results"

Browser Launch

• The browser must be launched with a remote debugging port specified so code can be run after authentication

Browser	OS	Command
Brave	Linux	brave-browser --remote-debugging-port=9222 --user-data-dir="$HOME/.config/playwright-profile" --new-window https://www.google.com
Brave	Windows	"C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe" --remote-debugging-port=9222 --user-data-dir="C:\playwright-profile" --new-window https://www.google.com
Chromium	Linux	chromium --remote-debugging-port=9222 --user-data-dir="$HOME/.config/playwright-profile" --new-window https://www.google.com
Chromium	Windows	"C:\Program Files\Chromium\Application\chrome.exe" --remote-debugging-port=9222 --user-data-dir="C:\playwright-profile" --new-window https://www.google.com
Google Chrome	Linux	google-chrome --remote-debugging-port=9222 --user-data-dir="$HOME/.config/playwright-profile" --new-window https://www.google.com
Google Chrome	Windows	"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --remote-debugging-port=9222 --user-data-dir="C:\playwright-profile" --new-window https://www.google.com
Microsoft Edge	Linux	microsoft-edge --remote-debugging-port=9222 --user-data-dir="$HOME/.config/playwright-profile" --new-window https://www.google.com
Microsoft Edge	Windows	"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe" --remote-debugging-port=9222 --user-data-dir="C:\playwright-profile" --new-window https://www.google.com

• Once browser is launched log into Google Account the same way it is normally done manually

Script Execution

Run the program to load data, connect to browser instance, and configure alerts (ensure PORT variable in file matches one used launching browser):

npx ts-node --compiler-options "{\"module\":\"CommonJS\"}" gAlerts-create.ts <alerts_file> <sites_file>

Note: Only the file name needs to be specified for the alerts & sites files as it is assumed they are in the data folder