UK Bin Collection Data (UKBCD)

This project aims to provide a neat and standard way of providing bin collection data in JSON format from UK councils that have no API to do so.

Why do this? You might want to use this in a Home Automation - for example say you had an LED bar that lit up on the day of bin collection to the colour of the bin you want to take out, then this repo provides the data for that.

PLEASE respect a councils infrastructure / usage policy and only collect data for your own personal use on a sutable frequency to your collection schedule.

Most scripts make use of Beautiful Soup 4 to scrape data, although others use different approaches, such as emulating web browser behaviour, or reading data from CSV files.

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Usage

PS G:\Projects\Python\UKBinCollectionData\uk_bin_collection\collect_data.py
usage: collect_data.py [-h] [-p POSTCODE] [-n NUMBER] [-u UPRN] module URL

positional arguments:
  module                Name of council module to use                           (required)
  URL                   URL to parse                                            (required)

options:
  -h, --help                            show this help message                  (optional)
  -p POSTCODE, --postcode POSTCODE      Postcode to parse - should include      (optional)
                                        a space and be wrapped in double
                                        quotes                                  
  -n NUMBER, --number NUMBER            House number to parse                   (optional)
  -u UPRN, --uprn UPRN                  UPRN to parse                           (optional)

Quickstart

The basic command to execute a script is:

python collect_data.py <council_name> "<collection_url>"

where council_name is the name of the council's .py script (without the .py) and collection_url is the URL to scrape. The help documentation refers to these as "module" and "URL", respectively. Supported council scripts can be found in the uk_bin_collection/uk_bin_collection/councils folder.

Some scripts require additional parameters, for example, when a UPRN is not passed in a URL, or when the script is not scraping a web page. For example, the Leeds City Council script needs two additional parameters - a postcode, and a house number. This is done like so:

python collect_data.py LeedsCityCouncil https://www.leeds.gov.uk/residents/bins-and-recycling/check-your-bin-day -p "LS1 2JG" -n 41

• A postcode can be passed with -p "postcode" or --postcode "postcode". The postcode must always include a space in the middle and be wrapped in double quotes (due to how command line arguments are handled).
• A house number can be passed with -n number or --number number.
• A UPRN reference can be passed with -u uprn or --uprn uprn.

To check the parameters needed for your council's script, please check the project wiki for more information.

Project dependencies

Some scripts rely on external packages to function. A list of required scripts for both development and execution can be found in the project's PROJECT_TOML Install can be done via poetry install from within the root of the repo.

UPRN Finder

Some councils make use of the UPRN (Unique property reference number) to identify your property. You can find yours here or here.

Requesting your council

To make a request for your council, first check the Issues page to make sure it has not already been requested. If not, please fill in a new Council Request form, including as much information as possible, including:

• Name of the council
• URL to bin collections
• An example postcode and/or UPRN (whichever is relevant)
• Any further information

Please be aware that this project is run by volunteer contributors and completion depends on numerous factors - even with a request, we cannot guarantee if/when your council will get a script.

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Reports

• 3.10
• 3.11

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FAQ

I've got an issue/support question - what do I do?

Please post in the HomeAssistant thread or raise a new (non council request) issue.

I'd like to contribute, where do I start?

Contributions are always welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md to get started. Please adhere to the project's code of conduct.

• If you're new to coding/Python/BeautifulSoup, feel free to check here for issues that are good for newcomers!
• If you would like to try writing your own scraper, feel free to fork this project and use existing scrapers as a base for your approach (or councilclasstemplate.py).

Contributors