Openrent/Rightmove Unofficial Api

Parses the script tags embedded in openrent.co.uk and rightmove.co.uk pages to create a rudimentary API. I'm using it to post new properties that match certain criteria to a slack channel.

To use with a venv

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python src/scrape.py

Or with conda/mamba

cp example_config.json config.json
# add your slack token and settings to config.json
mamba env create --name rentbot python=3.12
mamba activate rentbot
pip install -r requirements.txt
python src/scrape.py

To get the slack API tokem:

• go to https://api.slack.com/apps

• create a new app or choose an existing one

• ... something I can't rememeber

• Find "Install App" in the left hand side menu.

• Install to a workspace

• Copy the "Bot User OAuth Token" which begins with xoxb-

• Rename example_config.json -> config.json and fill it out with a slack bot token, start date, and some search urls from openrent or Rightmove

• install requirements.txt

• run scraper.py with python >3.8, possibly with a cron job.

How does it work?

Rightmove

• Generate a search URL by going to rightmove.co.uk and making a search
• GET it, in the returned HTML there is a script tag that begins <script> window.jsonModel = ...grab that and parse it to get data about the first 25 properties associated with a search.
• Haven't implemented getting more than 25 yet.

Getting extra info on RightMove properties

• pull the property url from the above
• GET it and grab the script tag that begins window.PAGE_MODEL = ..., this has more detailed info about each property

OpenRent

• Generate a search URL by going to openrent.co.uk and making a search
• Look for a script tag that contains "var PROPERTYIDS = ..." and then parse all the variables of the form var x = y
• They're all arrays of parameters so reshape it

Getting more info

• hit https://www.openrent.co.uk/search/propertiesbyid?ids=[id1,id2 ... id20] with the ids of properties you want info on. Max 20 per request