Is it possible to search for permits?

[redvving19]

Here is an example:
https://www.recreation.gov/permits/233273/registration/detailed-availability?date=2021-06-13

Thanis,

[juftin]

@redvving19 great question. Not currently, Recreation.gov doesn't bundle their permit availability and campsite availability together in the same API endpoint. Backcountry permits are theoretically possible, just a bit more challenging to integrate with camply than campsites. This won't be a feature added in the near feature, sorry for the bad news 😢

[juftin]

Whoa, this is impressive @dyurk1113. Really nice work! I'm wondering about a few things here:

• Is the permitinyo API endpoint exclusive to permits underneath the Inyo National Forest Recreation Area
  • In particular I'm wondering about just how many variations of these permit endpoints there are. Is there one endpoint to rule them all that we might be able to use across all permits, or is there somewhere that gives us the metadata of the endpoint to hit? I found the below endpoint while playing around a bit with Half Dome Cables.
    • https://recreation.gov/api/permits/{facility_id}/availability/month?start_date=2022-03-01T00:00:00.000Z

Full transparency, I haven't gotten to sit down and really dig into this yet. I also have a bit of a knowledge gap of how permits work through recreation.gov, what different kinds of permits there are, and which scenarios is camply a good fit for. I will have some more to follow up here as get an opportunity to dig into this further. But I really appreciate all of this, I'm excited about building some new functionality.

[dyurk1113]

I've tested that permitinyo at least works for Inyo NF, Sierra NF, Humboldt NF, Yosemite NP, and Sequoia/Kings Canyon NP (each of which has its own booking page on the rec.gov website), but it would be nice to find some sort of master entry point since permitinyo likely won't work all over the country. Maybe just using permits will work for other place as well as the Half Dome Cables.

In terms of use case, the main way I wanted to adapt your code for permits is almost the exact same as what you've done for campsites. Most popular permits are released ~6 months in advance (at least in the California areas I go to) and the quotas get booked up almost immediately, but if someone cancels after that the spots open up briefly if you're quick enough to snag them. In some ways it should be a bit simpler than campsites, because a) you just have to check one quota for each trail rather than checking different campsites within a larger campground and b) wilderness permits are only based on your entry date and don't carry any time limit for how long you can be out, so you only have to check if one entry date is open rather than looking for continuous date ranges.

The main challenge I've hit so far is figuring out the hidden ID numbers for each trailhead without manually scanning network packets. For some reason the IDs are easy to find in RIDB for Inyo permits, but I can't find them on RIDB for Yosemite or Sequoia/Kings Canyon.

[alexblanck]

FWIW, the availability for a few permits I'm interested in seems to be at a similar endpoint to the one @juftin mentioned above. Here's an example:

https://www.recreation.gov/api/permits/4675309/availability?start_date=2022-05-16T07%3A00%3A00.000Z&end_date=2022-06-30T00%3A00%3A00.000Z&commercial_acct=false&is_lottery=false

As far as finding the facility/permit ids, I think @dyurk1113 is right that this might be the more difficult part.

[dchaniel]

Hi! Thanks @redvving19 for the detailed code, planning to try that out, and I'd love to add it as a feature for camply if there's a robust way to do it. Do you or @juftin have any updates from the last year on permit searching? If not I'll start from the great example you left in this thread.

[juftin]

Hey @dchaniel. @changlan has done most of the hard work here: #281

I owe them some code review. The new feature would need some documentation and testing as well

[redvving19]

No problem, thought two birds with one stone as permits (such as half dome) are very hard to get but people cancel last minute and they become available.

Great work

[juftin]

Thank you. I have seen some kind of support for this over at https://campnab.com. It's not free, but a good service all the same. Good luck!

[redvving19]

Here is what I was hoping to solve:

" The walk-up lottery at the Leavenworth Ranger Station is suspended for the 2022 season. Walk-up permits will be released 1 week at a time randomly on Sundays. "

somehow alert when permits are released in order to snag one

[dyurk1113]

I believe something like the code I posted would work for that use case, assuming the availability is updated on rec.gov in the same way. However, it would only alert you when it happens to check with whatever frequency it makes requests (default 10 minutes); if the permits already got booked in that window you'd be out of luck. My guess is they probably do their best to block anything that would notify you instantly when permits appear in order to combat bots.

[redvving19]

Interesting enough I stumbled across another website charging a fee for this service on reddit:

https://outdoorstatus.com/last-issue/