Monitor fantasy premierleague player list for updates during transfer window. Send notification via pushbullet when a new player is added.

transferWatch.R

##
## transferWatch
##
## Monitor fantasy premierleague player list for updates during transfer window.
## Send a pushbullet notification when the player list has changed.
## Run as a cron job to send updates at regular intervals
##
## crontab:
## 0 * * * * Rscript $HOME/codes/transferWatch/transferWatch.R
## run every hour
##

#library(XML)
library(rvest)
library(xml2)
library(dplyr)
library(RPushbullet)
library(methods)

dataFolder <- Sys.getenv('HOME')
l.devices <- RPushbullet::pbGetDevices()
devices <- unlist(lapply(l.devices[['devices']], function(x) x[['nickname']]))
# Scrape site and pull back tables of players
url <- 'https://fantasy.premierleague.com/player-list/'
pos <- c('GLK', 'DEF', 'MID', 'FWD')
#tabs <- XML::readHTMLTable(url, as.data.frame = TRUE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
tabs <- url %>% xml2::read_html(url) %>% html_nodes('.ism-table') %>% html_table()

for (i in seq_along(tabs)) {
  tabs[[i]]$Pos <- pos[(i+1) %/% 2]
}
new.tables <- dplyr::bind_rows(tabs)

filename <- paste0(dataFolder, '/players.csv')
if (file.exists(filename)) {
  # Read in old data
  old.tables <- read.csv(filename, stringsAsFactors = F, encoding = 'UTF-8')
  # Compare tables
  df.new <- dplyr::setdiff(new.tables[, c(1,2,5)], old.tables[, c(1,2,5)])
  if (nrow(df.new) > 0) {
    newPlayers <- paste0(apply(df.new, 1, function(x) paste0(x, collapse = ', ')), collapse='\n')
    RPushbullet::pbPost('note', 'Transfer News', body = newPlayers, recipients = devices)
  }
} 

# Write new data to file
write.csv(new.tables, filename, row.names=F)