Parser for the Mensa menu of the Uni Mainz

Written with node.js. Python version using Beautiful Soup

Node

NOTE: Outdated as of ~13.11.2018, syntax of the mensa code changed, only Python version has been updated

Requirements:

• request
• cheerio

npm install request cheerio

Usage

Run with node parse_mensa.js

Python

Requirements:

• requests
• beautifulsoup4

pip install requests beatifulsoup4

Usage

Run it with ./parse_mensa.py or python parse_mensa.py

Languages

German is used by default (and if --german is passed as an argument). If you add --english as a flag mostly everything will be shown in English. But be aware of a maybe wrong output since the Mensa is unable to provide proper (or even complete) translations of the German menu.

Examples

Markdown output of Mensa for current day:

./parse_mensa.py

Output better suited for terminals:

./parse_mensa.py --no-img --terminal

Mensaria for the next day:

parse_mensa.py mensaria morgen

Week plan for the (next) week:

./parse_mensa.py (next) week

Check for a certain dish (in the Mensaria), Käsespätzle will be used if dish is not passed:

./parse_mensa.py (mensaria) check (dish)

You might want to add the following aliases to your .bashrc:

alias mensa='~/parse_mensa.py --no-img --terminal'
alias mensaria='~/parse_mensa.py --no-img --terminal mensaria'

Mensa Alarm

The shell script mensa_alarm.sh calls the Python script mentioned above to check for certain meals. If there's a match, it will be send to the desktop environment as a notification.

Käsespätzle is assumed by default. A different meal can be passed as an argument to the script.

To run it as a weekly cron job, e.g. every Monday at 11, create a new cron job with crontab -e and add the following line:

0 11 * * 1 /path/to/mensa_alarm.sh (dish)

The dish argument is optional. Make sure both the shell script and the Python script are executable and your cron job daemon is activated (systemctl status/enable cronie).