Valencia College Course Watcher

Monitors Valencia College Banner Self-Service for open seats and sends Discord notifications when availability changes.

Install

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
cp config.example.yaml config.yaml

Configuration

Edit config.yaml with your term and courses. See config.example.yaml for all options.

Finding term codes

Hit the terms endpoint directly:

curl -s 'https://banner.aws.valenciacollege.edu/StudentRegistrationSsb/ssb/classSearch/getTerms?searchTerm=&offset=1&max=30' | python3 -m json.tool

Format is YYYYTT: 10 = Fall, 20 = Spring, 30 = Summer. Example: 202630 = Summer 2026.

Finding CRNs

Go to Banner Self-Service, select your term, search for your course, and note the CRN (5-digit number) from the results.

Or use --once --dry-run with a subject/courseNumber config — the startup log prints all matching CRNs.

Discord webhook

Create a webhook in your Discord channel (Server Settings → Integrations → Webhooks) and set the env var:

export DISCORD_WEBHOOK="https://discord.com/api/webhooks/..."

Never put the webhook URL in config.yaml.

Usage

# Test a single cycle without sending notifications
DISCORD_WEBHOOK="https://discord.com/api/webhooks/..." python3 watcher.py --once --dry-run

# Run continuously
DISCORD_WEBHOOK="https://discord.com/api/webhooks/..." python3 watcher.py

# Custom config path
python3 watcher.py --config /path/to/config.yaml

CLI flags

Flag	Description
--once	Run a single poll cycle and exit
--dry-run	Log notifications instead of sending to Discord
--config PATH	Config file path (default: config.yaml)

How it works

1. On startup, validates the term code and watch targets against live Banner data. Fails loudly if anything is wrong.
2. Each poll cycle creates a fresh Banner session (3-step flow: init cookies → set term → search).
3. Tracks seatsAvailable and waitAvailable per CRN in seats.json.
4. Notifies on 0 → >0 transitions. Re-arms when seats go back to 0.
5. First run populates state without notifications (avoids startup storm).
6. Exponential backoff on errors (30s → 60s → ... capped at 15min).

Online-only filtering

When online_only: true (the default), the watcher excludes all in-person and Mixed Mode sections. Only sections with instructionalMethod == "X" (Banner's code for fully online courses) are tracked. Mixed Mode (M) requires campus attendance and is not considered online. If no online sections currently exist for a watch target, the watcher logs a warning and continues running — it will notify you if an online section is added later.

New-section detection

When notify_new_sections: true (the default), the watcher sends a Discord notification whenever a CRN appears in search results that wasn't in the previous state file. This catches mid-term section additions. The notification uses a blue embed titled "New section added." This feature respects online_only — if enabled, only new online sections trigger notifications. Like seat notifications, new-section notifications are suppressed on the very first run to avoid a startup storm.

Always-on deployment (systemd)

# /etc/systemd/system/course-watcher.service
[Unit]
Description=Valencia Course Watcher
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=youruser
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/course_notif
EnvironmentFile=/path/to/course_notif/.env
ExecStart=/path/to/course_notif/venv/bin/python3 watcher.py
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=30

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Create the env file with restricted permissions:

echo 'DISCORD_WEBHOOK=https://discord.com/api/webhooks/...' > /path/to/course_notif/.env
chmod 600 /path/to/course_notif/.env

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now course-watcher
sudo journalctl -u course-watcher -f  # tail logs