Foodsharing EinAb Notifier

Get a Telegram message when a new slot appears on the public Foodsharing Zürich “Einführungsabholungen” (EinAb) Google Sheet—without checking the sheet yourself.

By default it notifies when a row’s Status contains frei (configurable).

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What you need

• A Telegram account
• A GitHub account (for the scheduled workflow)

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1. Create a Telegram bot and get your chat ID

Bot token

1. Open Telegram and talk to @BotFather.
2. Send /newbot and follow the prompts.
3. Copy the HTTP API token BotFather gives you. That value is your TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN.

Chat ID

The bot must be allowed to message you (or a group you add it to). Your numeric ID is TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID.

Easy approach: message @userinfobot or @getidsbot and copy your user ID.

Alternative: start a chat with your new bot, send any message, then open this URL in a browser (replace YOUR_BOT_TOKEN):

https://api.telegram.org/botYOUR_BOT_TOKEN/getUpdates

Look for "chat":{"id": …} and use that number (including a leading minus if it is a group).

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2. Use this project on GitHub

Fork or copy

• Fork this repository to your GitHub account, or
• Use “Use this template” / copy the files into a new repo.

Add secrets

In your repo: Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → New repository secret

Name	Value
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN	Token from BotFather
TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID	Your chat ID (digits, or negative for a group)

Enable Actions

1. Open the Actions tab and enable workflows if GitHub asks.
2. The workflow EinAb Poller runs every 5 minutes and updates state.json in the repo when something changes (so each run knows what was already notified).

First run (no spam)

On the first successful run after a fresh state.json, the script records existing frei rows and does not send messages. After that, new matching rows trigger Telegram notifications.

If you forked a copy that already had a populated state.json, replace it with the bootstrap version from this repo (empty notified_keys, bootstrapped: false) so your first run matches a clean setup.

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How it works

1. Downloads the sheet as CSV (public export URL).
2. Keeps rows whose status matches your NOTIFY_STATUS list.
3. Compares with hashes stored in state.json and notifies only on new rows.
4. Sends messages via the Telegram Bot API.

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Security and privacy

• Never commit real TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN or TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID values into the repo. Use GitHub Actions secrets only.
• The workflow needs contents: write so it can commit state.json (required for remembering state between runs).
• The default Google Sheet is public; this tool only reads its published CSV.

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License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.