Death Notifier

Get notified when a famous person dies.

Wikipedia's editors are known for updating pages as soon as someone has died. Why not turn that into a service? This tool regularly checks if people are still alive according to Wikipedia, and emails you as soon as that changes.

Development

Requirements

• PHP 8.1+ (i.e. apt install php php-cgi)
  • PHP cURL (i.e. apt install php-curl)
  • PHP DOM (i.e. apt install php-dom)
  • PHP SQLite 3 (i.e. apt install php-sqlite3)
• composer (make sure composer.phar is on your path)
• npm

Setting up

# Install dependencies (only needed once)
$> composer.phar install
$> npm ci

Building

# Build the tool in `dist/` for development
$> npm run dev
# Same as above, but automatically rerun it whenever files are changed
$> npm run dev:server
# Build the tool in `dist/` for deployment
$> npm run deploy

Pre-commit

# Update lock files
$> composer.phar update
$> npm install

Static analysis

# Run static analysis
$> npm run analyze
# Run all tests
$> npm run test
# Run all tests in package
$> npm run test -- --test-target=com/fwdekker/deathnotifier/wikipedia/
# Run static analysis and tests
$> npm run check

Deployment

Build the software and move it to the right directory.

$> npm run deploy  # Build
$> mv dist/ /var/www/death-notifier/  # Move to public directory

Then, add the following lines to your crontab using sudo -u www crontab -e:

* * * * * cd /var/www/death-notifier && php /var/www/death-notifier/api.php action=process-email-queue password=secret_password
*/5 * * * * cd /var/www/death-notifier && php /var/www/death-notifier/api.php action=update-all-trackings password=secret_password

It is recommended to also use a tool such as newsyslog to manage log rotation.