Willem Hoek

Never forget a birthday again with GitHub Actions and Python

May 24, 2020

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881

Birthday Reminder

After forgetting yet another birthday, I decided to set up a simple daily email reminder system. It sends me an email every day of all the birthdays coming up in the next few days.

The automation is done using GitHub Actions. It consists of a small Python program and the emails are send using Sendgrid’s API. Due to the low volumes, all the services used - are on FREE plans.

Since setting it up, I have added some forex and stock price information into the daily mail. The code is included in the GitHub repository but can be commented out if not used.

Tools and API’s used

GitHub repository
Github Actions
SendGrid API to send emails

Optional

IEX Cloud API for stock prices
Finnhub API for forex rates

GitHub Repository

https://github.com/whoek/birthday-reminder

Files used:

daily_mail.py - Python program
.env - Environment variables used by the Python program
birthdays.csv - List of birthdays and anniversary - csv format
.github/workflows/pythonapp.yml - GitHub Actions setup file

Test on your local machine first

You need 3 files daily_mail.py, .env and birthdays.csv from the GitHub repository above
Install some Python dependencies
pip install environs requests sendgrid
Get a SendGrid API key. It is free if you sent a low volume of emails per day
If you do not want to include stock prices and forex info, comment out get_forex_html() and get_stock_html() in the python file
- If you want to include forex info, get an API key from Finnhub. It is free for basic quotes
- For stock quotes, get a key from IEX Cloud. It is free for low volume, basic info

def main():
    html_content = \
#       get_forex_html() + \
#       get_stock_html() + \
        get_birthday_html()

Update the From and To email addresses and API keys in the .env file
Run with python daily_email.py

Deploy on Github

In addition to the 3 files used for local installation above, you need the GitHub Actons setup file pythonapp.yml in .github/workflows/ folder
The only change required in .github/workflows/pythonapp.yml file is to set the time when the program will execute. In the file below, it executes daily at 6h UTC. Use crontab guru as a guide if you are not to speed with the cron parameters

# Send daily emails - time in UTC (GMT)
name: The Daily Mail
on:
  schedule:
  - cron:  '0 6 * * *'
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - name: Set up Python 3.7
      uses: actions/setup-python@v2
      with:
        python-version: 3.7
    - name: Install dependencies
      run: |
        python -m pip install --upgrade pip
        pip install environs requests sendgrid
    - name: Send email
      run:  python ./daily_mail.py

Ensure GitHub Actions is Enabled within Settings of your repository
To track status or re-run a GitHub Action, see details under the Actions

Total runtime on GitHub is about 30 seconds. On the GitHub free plan, you have 2,000 Actions minutes/month available. So no problem there.

Birthdays

Maintaining the birthday file

I used standard csv file format rather than yaml, json or any other. This is so that I can maintain the list easily on my local machine using Excel. It also displays nicely on GitHub.

Sample file

birthday,age,name,note
2020-06-21,once,Father's Day,Ireland
2021-06-20,once,Father's Day,Ireland
2022-06-19,once,Father's Day,Ireland
2020-05-26,45,Adrian Bruce,birthday
1964-05-27,0,Alexander MacDonald,birthday

birthday - Must be in yyyy-mm-dd format
age - You can enter the age of the person on the specified date. Make this 0 if date of birth was entered. This is used to show the calculated age of the person in the email. If age of person is unknown , leave the age field blank. Where the age field is blank, the year field of birthday is ignored. For once-off reminders or events, add the word once in the age field. The reminder will only be shown on date indicated.