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AeroBot (Auto-Enrollment Bot) is an automated webcrawler that enrolls you in your class instantly upon a seat opening up.

Problem Statement

MSU class scheduling is notoriously difficult. Most of the classes you want are quickly filled and even the waitlist can pile up. The conventional solution is to wait for an enrollment notification and meticulously log into the often bogged down servers, which can take minutes upon high workload just to successfully verify.

The Solution

AeroBot allows the user to enter classes that they wish to enroll in PRE-EMPTIVELY by course code. Even before class scheduling is available, Aerobot is able to navigate the pre-defined layout of the site almost instantly and be ready the second it does open.

Summary

The bot will monitor course enrollment and openings non-stop over a set interval and routinely check. Upon a seat opening up, the bot will automatically enroll the user (in less than 30 seconds most times), as opposed to the 10+ minutes it takes you to boot up your computer, navigate, log in, select a course, and repeatedly confirm.

The Web Crawler is extremely efficient, needing only the pages HTML to run. Whereas humans must process each page visually, the AeroBot needs only a simple text file, scans it in seconds, moves from page to page confirming along the way, saving several minutes in the process of searching.

Sample Email

Here is a sample email that the bot would periodically search for. As soon as it was received, the program would continue to phase 2: enrollment.

Sample Runs

(Note: These are more recent runs, when the original classes are not available, so the bot completes up until it searches for the specific class)

Demo: No Email Found

Demo: Successful Run

Results & Conclusion

The biggest issue that led to failed runs was timing. The code itself often ran faster than the servers could receive, process and return, so an artificial delay was crucial to the application running smoothly.

The most difficult aspect of development was preparing a versatile and flexible framework that could handle unexpected login verifications, server errors, and other bumps along the way.

The greatest strength was an iterative development cycle- I first built the application to login through google, passing checks along the way, then I made it able to log into MSU's servers and enroll at various states of the system (enrollment not available, class not available, class available) and the different checks it had to handle along the way.

Feature