Command Line Usage#

When installed, camply's command line utility can be invoked with the command, camply. The CLI tool accepts one of six sub-arguments: campsites, recreation-areas, campgrounds, providers, equipment-types, and configure.

Important

The multi-line commands in this documentation correspond to running camply on a MacOS or Linux Shell. If you are a Windows user take note that multi-line commands on Windows Shells use the ^ character instead of \ to escape new lines.

❯ camply --help

 Usage: camply [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

 Welcome to camply, the campsite finder.
 Finding reservations at sold out campgrounds can be tough. That's where camply comes in. It searches the
 APIs of booking services like https://recreation.gov (which indexes thousands of campgrounds across the
 USA) to continuously check for cancellations and availabilities to pop up. Once a campsite becomes
 available, camply sends you a notification to book your spot!


 visit the camply documentation at https://juftin.com/camply

╭─ Options ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│                                                                                                        │
│  --debug/--no-debug             Enable extra debugging output                                          │
│  --provider              TEXT   Camping Search Provider. Defaults to 'RecreationDotGov'                │
│  --version                      Show the version and exit.                                             │
│  --help                         Show this message and exit.                                            │
│                                                                                                        │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─ Commands ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│                                                                                                        │
│  campgrounds              Search for Campgrounds (inside of Recreation Areas) and list them            │
│  campsites                Find Available Campsites with Custom Search Criteria                         │
│  configure                Set up camply configuration file with an interactive console                 │
│  equipment-types          Get a list of supported equipment                                            │
│  list-campsites           List campsite IDs for a given campground or recreation area                  │
│  providers                List the different camply providers                                          │
│  recreation-areas         Search for Recreation Areas and list them                                    │
│  test-notifications       Test your notification provider setup                                        │
│  tui                      Open Textual TUI.                                                            │
│                                                                                                        │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Simple Examples#

Search for a specific recreation area (recreation areas contain campgrounds):

camply recreation-areas --search "Glacier National Park"

Search for campgrounds (campgrounds contain campsites):

camply campgrounds --search "Fire Lookout Towers" --state CA

Search for available campsites, get an notification whenever one becomes available, and continue searching after the first one is found:

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2725 \
    --start-date 2023-07-10 \
    --end-date 2023-07-18 \
    --notifications email \
    --search-forever

providers#

List the various providers that camply works with.

camply providers

Note

If no provider is specified, camply will use the default provider, RecreationDotGov, which searches for recreation areas, campgrounds, and campsites listed on https://recreation.gov

campsites#

Search for a campsite within camply. Campsites are returned based on the search criteria provided. Campsites contain properties like booking date, site type (tent, RV, cabin, etc), capacity, price, and a link to make the booking. Required parameters include --start-date, --end-date, --rec-area / --campground / --campsite. Constant searching functionality can be enabled with --continuous and notifications can be enabled using --notifications (see the Send a Push Notification section for more information).

Arguments#

--rec-area: RECREATION_AREA_ID
- Add Recreation Areas (comprised of campgrounds) by ID. **example
--campground: CAMPGROUND_ID
- Add individual Campgrounds by ID. **example
--campsite: CAMPSITE_ID
- Add individual Campsites by ID. **example
--start-date: START_DATE
- YYYY-MM-DD: Start of Search window. You will be arriving this day. **example
--end-date: END_DATE
- YYYY-MM-DD: End of Search window. You will be checking out this day.. **example
--day
- Day(s) of the Week to search. **example
--weekends
- Only search for weekend bookings (Fri/Sat nights). **example
--nights
- Search for campsite stays with consecutive nights. Defaults to 1 which returns all campsites found. **example
--provider: PROVIDER
- Camping Search Provider. Defaults to 'RecreationDotGov', not case-sensitive. Options include: RecreationDotGov, Yellowstone, GoingToCamp, RecreationDotGovDailyTicket, RecreationDotGovDailyTimedEntry, RecreationDotGovTicket, RecreationDotGovTimedEntry. **example
--continuous
- Continuously check for a campsite to become available, and quit once at least one campsite is found. **example
--search-forever
- Enables continuous searching. This method continues to search after the first availability has been found. The one caveat is that it will never notify about the same identical campsite for the same booking date. **example
--notifications: NOTIFICATIONS
- Enables continuous searching. Types of notifications to receive. Options available are pushover, email, ntfy, apprise, pushbullet, slack, telegram, twilio, webhook, silent. Defaults to silent - which just logs messages to console. **example
--equipment
- Search for campsites compatible with your camping equipment. This argument accepts two options, the equipment name and its length If you don't want to filter based on length provide a length of 0. Accepted equipment names include Tent, RV. Trailer, Vehicle and are not case-sensitive. **example
--equipment-id
- Search for campsites campaitble with specific equipment categories. Going To Camp uses equipment category IDs for filtering campsites by equipment. Every recreation area has equipment categories unique to it. **example
--notify-first-try
- Enables continuous searching. Whether to send all non-silent notifications if more than 5 matching campsites are found on the first try. Defaults to false which only sends the first5. **example
--polling-interval: POLLING_INTERVAL
- Enables continuous searching. How often to wait in between checks (in minutes). Defaults to 10, cannot be less than 5. **example
--yaml-config
- Rather than provide arguments to the command line utility, instead pass a file path to a YAML configuration file. See the documentation for more information on how to structure your configuration file. **example
--offline-search
- When set to True, the campsite search will both save the results of the campsites it's found, but also load those campsites before beginning a search for other campsites. **example
--offline-search-path
- Enables offline search. This is the name of the file to be saved/loaded. Campsites can be saved as a serialized pickle file or a JSON file, depending on the file extension. When not specified, the filename will default to camply_campsites.json. **example
--search-once
- Enables continuous searching features - but doesn't actually search continuously. This option is only useful when you want to run camply periodically in a CRON job fashion but still receive notifications - it's strongly recommended you enable offline searching as well to save results between searches. **example

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2725 \
    --start-date 2023-07-10 \
    --end-date 2023-07-18

recreation-areas#

Search for Recreation Areas and their IDs. Recreation Areas are places like National Parks and National Forests that can contain one or many campgrounds.

Arguments#

--search SEARCH
- Search for Campgrounds or Recreation Areas by search string.
--state STATE
- Filter by US state code.

camply recreation-areas --search "Yosemite National Park"

**see the examples for more information

campgrounds#

Search for Campgrounds and their IDs. Campgrounds are facilities inside of Recreation Areas that contain campsites. Most 'campgrounds' are areas made up of multiple campsites, others are facilities like fire towers or cabins that might only contain a single 'campsite' to book.

Arguments#

--search SEARCH
- Search for Campgrounds or Recreation Areas by search string.
--state STATE
- Filter by US state code.
--rec-area: RECREATION_AREA_ID
- Add Recreation Areas (comprised of campgrounds) by ID.
--campground: CAMPGROUND_ID
- Add individual Campgrounds by ID.

camply campgrounds --search "Fire Tower Lookout" --state CA

**see the examples for more information

configure#

Set up camply configuration file with an interactive console

In order to send notifications through camply you must set up some authorization values. Whether you need to set up Pushover notifications , PushBullet, Telegram, or Email messages, everything can be done through the configure command. The end result is a file called .camply in your home folder. See the Running in Docker section to see how you can use environment variables instead of a config file.

camply configure

test-notifications#

Test your notification provider setup.

If you want to send yourself a test notification via camply, the test-notifiactions command is for you. See the Send a Push Notification section for more details on how to set up the notification provider of your choice.

camply test-notifications --notifications email

list-campsites#

When searching for a specific campsite by ID, it can be useful to list the campsites that were found. This command will list the campsites that were found given specific camground / recreation area ID.

camply list-campsites --campground 598 --provider ReserveCalifornia

That search above would tell you that Premium Campsite #88 has ID #43473. Using that information you can then search for that specific campsite by ID:

camply campsites \
  --provider ReserveCalifornia \
  --campground 598 \
  --campsite 43473 \
  --start-date 2023-07-13 \
  --end-date 2023-07-14

Note

Some providers require that you pass a campsite ID and and a campground ID, while others only require a campsite ID.

tui#

Camply has an optional TUI interface thanks to textual and trogon. A TUI is a text-based user interface that allows you to interact with camply in a more visual way, it's a visual application that runs in your terminal. The TUI config is a great way to set up your camp search with your mouse and keyboard, and then run camply like you normally would.

Note

Camply's TUI command requires that the tui extra is installed. To install camply with the TUI extra, run pipx install "camply[tui]".

camply tui

camply TUI

Examples#

Read through the examples below to get a better understanding of camply, its features, and the functionality of the different arguments provided to the CLI.

Searching for a Campsite#

The below search looks for campsites inside of Recreation Area ID #2725 (Glacier National Park) between 2023-07-10 and 2023-07-17. The search will be performed once and any results will be logged to the console. camply searches for campsites inside of search windows in increments of one night. --start-date and --end-date define the bounds of the search window, you will be leaving the day after --end-date.

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2725 \
    --start-date 2023-07-10 \
    --end-date 2023-07-18

Searching for a Campsite by Campground ID#

The below search looks for across three campgrounds (all inside Glacier National Park) between 2023-07-10 and 2023-07-17. Multiple Campgrounds (and Recreation Areas too) can be found by supplying the arguments more than once.

camply campsites \
    --campground 232493 \
    --campground 251869 \
    --campground 232492 \
    --start-date 2023-07-10 \
    --end-date 2023-07-18

Searching for a Specific Campsite by ID#

Sometimes you have a favorite campsite inside your favorite campground. To search for just a specific campsite (and not just all campsites within a campground) you can give its ID to camply with the --campsite argument. For example, site R035 in Many Glacier Campground, MT is close to a trailhead. Its URL is https://www.recreation.gov/camping/campsites/98363 , here we can see that it's ID is 98363. You can search for one or many campsites by ID by supplying the --campsite argument. You can provide the --campsite argument once or multiple times to search for different campsites.

Note

For RecreationDotGov, --campsite arguments override any --rec-area or --campground options provided. And --campground will override the --rec-area option.

However other providers may need you to provide both a --campground and --campsite ID. See the list-campsites example for more information.

camply campsites \
    --campsite 98363 \
    --start-date 2023-07-10 \
    --end-date 2023-07-18

Continuously Searching for A Campsite#

Most of the time you want to look for campgrounds until an eventual match is found. The below snippet will search for matching campsites until it finds a match. It also sends a notification via pushover once matches are found. Alternate notification methods are listed in the Send a Push Notification example.

Note

The use of --continuous in the below example isn't actually necessary. Continuous searching is enabled when any of the following options are provided: --continuous, --notifications, --search-forever, --polling-interval, --notify-first-try.

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2725 \
    --start-date 2023-07-12 \
    --end-date 2023-07-13 \
    --continuous \
    --notifications pushover \
    --notify-first-try

Warning

When camply is told to running continuously with non-silent notifications set up and it finds more than 5 matching campsites on the first try, it will only send notifications for the first 5 campsites. This is to prevent thousands of campsites flooding your notifications. It's always encouraged to perform an initial online search before setting up a camply search. To bypass this behavior and send all notifications, pass the --notify-first-try argument.

Searching Across Multiple Time Windows#

There might be an occasion where you're looking to search for a campsite across multiple date ranges, i.e. any Monday in July. camply supports this quite nicely by passing multiple --start-date and --end-date options.

Note

The important rule about multiple --start-date and --end-date options is that ordering matters. If you provide multiple start dates and multiple end dates the first end date will correspond to the first start date, and so on and so forth.

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2725 \
    --start-date 2023-07-12 \
    --end-date 2023-07-13 \
    --start-date 2023-07-19 \
    --end-date 2023-07-20 \
    --start-date 2023-07-26 \
    --end-date 2023-07-27

Continue Looking After The First Match Is Found#

Sometimes you want to search for all possible matches up until your arrival date. No problem. Add the --search-forever and camply won't stop sending notifications after the first match is found.

Note

camply will save and store all previous notifications when --search-forever is enabled, so it won't notify you about the exact same campsite availability twice. This can be problematic when certain campsites become available more than once.

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2725 \
    --start-date 2023-07-01 \
    --end-date 2023-08-01 \
    --notifications pushover \
    --search-forever

Send a Push Notification#

camply supports notifications via a number of services:

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2991 \
    --start-date 2023-09-10 \
    --end-date 2023-09-21 \
    --notifications pushover

Like all providers, Pushover requires that you share credentials/authentication - for Pushover this involves sharing your "Pushover User Key" with camply through a configuration file (via the camply configure command) or though environment variables (PUSHOVER_PUSH_USER). See the Environment Variables section for a list of relevant environment variables per notification provider.

Info

When searching continuously camply uses the silent notification provider unless you expictly specify another notification provider to use. The silent notification provider simply prints logs to your console when matching campsites are found.

Note

I personally use Pushover notifications - it's built for push notifications, easy to set up, and includes a 30-day trial and a one-time fee of $5 after that to unlock lifetime programmatic push notifications. There are other notification providers like Ntfy, Slack and Email that are free to use if that's more your style.

Note

Camply provides a courtesy Pushover API token for you to use, however it's highly reccomended that you create and use your own API token. This is done via the PUSHOVER_PUSH_TOKEN environment variable. In the past, some users have exhausted the courtesy token's monthly limit with faulty camply configurations.

Send a Text Message#

If you want to sign up for a Twilio account, camply also supports sending text messages via SMS. You can set up your Twilio configuration via camply configure. You will need to set the following config values for Twilio: TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID, TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN, TWILIO_SOURCE_NUMBER, TWILIO_DEST_NUMBERS.

Sending text messages via Twilio also requires the twilio extras:

pip install camply[twilio]

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2991 \
    --start-date 2023-09-10 \
    --end-date 2023-09-21 \
    --notifications twilio

Send a Notification to Different Services#

camply supports notifications from different providers. To send notifications to multiple providers you can pass the --notifications parameter multiple times. YAML config entries also accept an array as well.

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2991 \
    --start-date 2023-09-10 \
    --end-date 2023-09-21 \
    --notifications email \
    --notifications pushover

Send a Notification Using Apprise-Compatible Services#

In addition to the built-in notification providers, you can also send notifications using one of the many popular services supported by Apprise. You'll need to set up a supported notification URL using the APPRISE_URL config value; Refer to the Apprise documentation to learn how to format a URL to fit your needs.

Using Apprise notifications requires the apprise extras:

pip install camply[apprise]

Searching for Specific Weekdays#

The below search spans across a three-month time window, but it only looks for campsites that are available on a Tuesday or Wednesday night.

Note

You can use the day's full spelling or an abbreviation - and neither is case sensitive.

camply campsites \
    --campground 232446 \
    --start-date 2023-05-01 \
    --end-date 2023-08-01 \
    --day Tuesday \
    --day Wednesday

Look for Weekend Campsite Availabilities#

This below search looks across larger periods of time, but only if a campground is available to book on a Friday or Saturday night (--weekends). It also uses the --polling-interval argument which checks every 5 minutes instead of the default 10 minutes.

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2991 \
    --start-date 2023-05-01 \
    --end-date 2023-08-01 \
    --weekends \
    --notifications email \
    --polling-interval 5

Note

Using the --weekends option is the same as specifying --day Friday + --day Saturday.

Look for Consecutive Nights at the Same Campsite#

A lot of times you need to search for consecutive nights at the same campsite. By default, any and all campsites with a single nights booking are returned by camply. To search for campsites with consecutive night stays, pass the --nights argument.

Note

The --nights argument handles issues with improper search parameters. For example, if you set the --weekends parameter the maximum number of consecutive nights possible is 2. If you supply more than this your --nights parameter will be overwritten to 2.

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2991 \
    --start-date 2023-05-01 \
    --end-date 2023-08-01 \
    --nights 4

Look for a Campsite Inside of Yellowstone#

Yellowstone doesn't use https://recreation.gov to manage its campgrounds, instead it uses its own proprietary system. In order to search the Yellowstone API for campsites, make sure to pass the --provider "yellowstone" argument. This flag disables --rec-area argument.

To learn more about using camply to find campsites at Yellowstone, check out this discussion.

camply campsites \
    --provider yellowstone \
    --start-date 2023-07-09 \
    --end-date 2023-07-17 \
    --continuous

Look for a Campsite from GoingToCamp#

Note

The GoingToCamp provider supports lots of different park systems, including Washington State Parks, Canada National Parks, and more. See the GoingToCamp provider documentation for more information.

The GoingToCamp provider requires that you specify both a Recreation Area and a Campground in your search. First you'll need to find your Recreation Area ID:

camply recreation-areas --provider goingtocamp

For this example we'll search Washington State Parks which corresponds to Recreation Area ID #4. Next we'll list the Campgrounds within the Recreation Area:

camply campgrounds --provider goingtocamp --rec-area 4

The above command will list all of the campgrounds within our Recreation Area. For the next example we'll search for an availability at Bay Bridge State Park, which is in our Recreation Area and corresponds to Campground ID #-2147483645 (GoingToCamp regularly uses negative ID numbers).

camply campsites \
  --provider goingtocamp \
  --rec-area 4 \
  --campground -2147483645 \
  --start-date 2023-09-01 \
  --end-date 2023-09-02

Searching GoingToCamp Using Equipment#

In the previous GoingToCamp example we were searching Recreation Area ID #4 and Campground ID #-2147483645. GoingToCamp also allows us to search for campsites using equipment filters. In order to find the corresponding equipment IDs, you'll use the equipment-types command and pass in the Recreation Area ID:

camply equipment-types --provider goingtocamp --rec-area 4

The previous command will list all of the Equipment IDs for your Recreation Area. For our example we will use Equipment ID #-32763 which corresponds to an RV/Trailer up to 25'. Next we can use that Equipment ID in our search:

camply campsites \
  --provider goingtocamp \
  --rec-area 4 \
  --campground -2147483645 \
  --start-date 2023-09-01 \
  --end-date 2023-09-02 \
  --equipment-id -32763

Look for a Campsite Across Multiple Recreation areas#

You don't have to confine your search to a single Recreation or Campground ID. Adding multiple arguments to the command line will search across multiple IDs. Keep in mind that any --campground arguments will overwrite all --rec-area arguments.

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2991 \
    --rec-area 1074 \
    --start-date 2023-07-09 \
    --end-date 2023-07-17 \
    --nights 5

Using a YAML Configuration file to search for campsites#

Sometimes, using a YAML configuration file is easier to manage all of your search options. See the below YAML example file and corresponding camply command:

provider: RecreationDotGov # RecreationDotGov IF NOT PROVIDED
recreation_area: # (LIST OR SINGLE ENTRY)
    - 2991 # Yosemite National Park, CA (All Campgrounds)
    - 1074 # Sierra National Forest, CA (All Campgrounds)
campgrounds: # ENTIRE FIELD CAN BE OMITTED IF NOT USED - (LIST OR SINGLE ENTRY)
campsites: # OVERRIDES CAMPGROUNDS / RECREATION AREA - (LIST OR SINGLE ENTRY)
start_date: 2023-09-12 # YYYY-MM-DD - (LIST OR SINGLE ENTRY)
end_date: 2023-09-13 # YYYY-MM-DD - (LIST OR SINGLE ENTRY)
days: # Array of day names - DEFAULTS TO `null`
weekends: false # Only search for weekend bookings (Fri/Sat nights). FALSE BY DEFAULT
nights: 1 # 1 BY DEFAULT
continuous: true # DEFAULTS TO TRUE
polling_interval: 5 # DEFAULTS TO 10 , CAN'T BE LESS THAN 5
notifications: email # (silent, email, pushover, pushbullet, and telegram), DEFAULTS TO `silent`
search_forever: true # FALSE BY DEFAULT
search_once: false # FALSE BY DEFAULT
notify_first_try: false # FALSE BY DEFAULT
equipment: # Array of Equipment Search Lists - DEFAULTS TO `null`
offline_search: false # FALSE BY DEFAULT
offline_search_path: camply_campsites.json # Defaults to `camply_campsites.json`

camply campsites --yaml-config example_search.yaml

Note

A JSON Schema for the YAML configuration file can be found at docs/yaml_search.json

Searching for a Campsite That Fits Your Equipment#

Camply can help you filter campsites to fit your specific equipment, like a Trailer or an RV. Most likely, you care that the campsite fits the length of your RV so you can specify that as well. To search for specific equipment and its length provide the --equipment option with two arguments, the equipment name and the equipment length. If you don't want to filter based on length provide a length of zero. If you provide multiple --equipment options, sites matching any of your search equipment will be returned.

Current supported equipment names are Vehicle, Tent, RV, and Trailer. Be careful when filtering on Tents and Vehicle length, sometimes Recreation.gov doesn't provide that information, it is safer to set length to 0.

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2991 \
    --start-date 2023-07-09 \
    --end-date 2023-07-17 \
    --nights 5 \
    --equipment RV 25

Here's what the above search would look like on a YAML Config:

recreation_area:
    - 2991
start_date: 2023-07-09
end_date: 2023-07-17
nights: 5
equipment:
    - [RV, 25]

Finally, here's a search that accommodates trailers of all lengths:

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2991 \
    --start-date 2023-07-09 \
    --end-date 2023-07-17 \
    --nights 5 \
    --equipment Trailer 0

Saving the Results of a Search#

In some cases, you might want to save all the campsites found during one search and load them into a new search, so you don't receive duplicate notifications. This can be achieved by passing the --offline-search flag. By default, camply will save the results in a file called camply_campsites.json.

Alternatively, you can also path the --offline-search-path flag to specify a certain file path to save the results as. When a file path with a .json extension is passed camply will export the results as a JSON file. When the .pkl or .pickle extension is used, camply will use a serialized Pickle file.

camply \
  campsites \
  --campground 232064 \
  --start-date 2023-09-01 \
  --end-date 2023-10-01 \
  --continuous \
  --offline-search

camply \
  campsites \
  --campground 232064 \
  --start-date 2023-09-01 \
  --end-date 2023-10-01 \
  --continuous \
  --offline-search-path campsites.pkl

Search for Recreation Areas by Query String#

Just need to find what your local Recreation Area ID number is? This simple command allows you to search and list recreation areas. It accepts --search and --state arguments.

camply recreation-areas --search "Yosemite National Park"

Look for Specific Campgrounds Within a Recreation Area#

Need to get even more specific and search for a particular campground? This search lists campgrounds attached to a recreation area id --rec-area. It also accepts --search and --state arguments.

camply campgrounds --rec-area 2991

Look for Specific Campgrounds by Query String#

The below search looks for Fire Lookout Towers to stay in inside of California.

camply campgrounds --search "Fire Tower Lookout" --state CA

Searching for Tickets and Timed Entries#

The Recreation.gov Tickets, Tours, & Timed-Entry Providers support "campgrounds" that are actually resources like timed entry appointments and tickets to recreation activities.

Tickets + Tours#

Let's say you're going on vacation in Hawaii and you're interested in what hiking tickets are available:

camply campgrounds \
    --provider RecreationDotGovTicket \
    --state HI

Nice, there are some great options there. Let's say we've decided on the Haleakala National Park Summit Sunrise Reservations. This "campground" has ID #253731. These reservations are hard to snag but they do pop up!

camply campsites \
  --provider RecreationDotGovTicket \
  --start-date 2023-06-09 \
  --end-date 2023-06-10 \
  --campground 253731 \
  --search-forever \
  --notifications email

Timed Entry#

Let's say you're visiting Oregon and wanting to visit the Lava River Cave. They've recently implemented a Timed Reservation System - so we'd use the RecreationDotGovTimedEntry provider:

camply campgrounds \
    --provider RecreationDotGovTimedEntry \
    --state OR

Using the above command we can see that the campground ID we want is #10089508:

camply campsites \
  --provider RecreationDotGovTimedEntry \
  --start-date 2023-06-09 \
  --end-date 2023-06-10 \
  --campground 10089508 \
  --search-forever \
  --notifications email

Using the Daily Providers#

You'll also notice that there are alternative daily providers for our tours and timed entry providers: RecreationDotGovTicket -> RecreationDotGovDailyTicket and RecreationDotGovTimedEntry -> RecreationDotGovDailyTimedEntry. These providers search the same recreation activities as their non-daily counterparts but there are scenarios where you might want to use the daily provider.

When you use the daily provider it issues an API request for each day in your search range, instead of once per month with the non-daily providers. This means that you can make as many as 31x more API requests compared to the non-daily counterpart. camply needs to be respectful of recreation.gov so always use the non-daily version when you have a large search window.

It's suspected that the non-daily providers return "cached" results and can take longer to reflect actual inventory. When you have a small search window, or if you need to use the --equipment filtering functionality, then you should use the daily provider.

In the following scenario we'll search for tickets to a great attraction, the Keys Ranch Tour, in Joshua Tree National Park.

Here's how you could search for that and retrieve its campground ID, #300004:

camply campgrounds \
    --provider RecreationDotGovDailyTicket \
    --search "Keys Ranch Tour"

Great, now let's search:

camply campsites \
  --provider RecreationDotGovDailyTicket \
  --start-date 2023-07-06 \
  --end-date 2023-07-07 \
  --campground 300004

Let's take it even a step further, let's say you need 4 spots in their 1:00PM time slot. In this case we can search for that timeslot using the --equipment option and providing the time and minimum spots needed (1300 and 4):

camply campsites \
  --provider RecreationDotGovDailyTicket \
  --start-date 2023-07-06 \
  --end-date 2023-07-07 \
  --campground 300004 \
  --equipment 1300 4

Here's another example of searching for a specific time, this time for the timed-entry Tuweep Area Day Use Passes in Grand Canyon National Park (ID #10089462). In this example we're looking for any number of spots in their 8:00AM-5:00PM time slot:

camply campsites \
  --provider RecreationDotGovDailyTimedEntry \
  --start-date 2023-07-06 \
  --end-date 2023-07-07 \
  --campground 10089462 \
  --equipment 0800 0

Search ReserveCalifornia#

ReserveCalifornia is the online booking provider for California State Parks and it works a lot like RecreationDotGov.

Note

ReserveCalifornia is one of many providers that use the UseDirect API. The following providers are also supported:

AlabamaStateParks: Searches on ReserveAlaPark.com for Campsites
ArizonaStateParks: Searches on AZStateParks.com for Campsites
FloridaStateParks: Searches on FloridaStateParks.org for Campsites
MinnesotaStateParks: Searches on ReserveMN.usedirect.com for Campsites
MissouriStateParks: Searches on icampmo1.usedirect.com for Campsites
OhioStateParks: Searches on ReserveOhio.com for Campsites
VirginiaStateParks: Searches on ReserveVAParks.com for Campsites
NorthernTerritory: Searches the Australian Northern Territory for Campsites
FairfaxCountyParks: Searches on fairfax.usedirect.com for Campsites (Virginia)
MaricopaCountyParks: Searches on MaricopaCountyParks.org for Campsites (Arizona)
OregonMetro: Searches on OregonMetro.gov for Campsites (Portland Metro)

If you wanted to look for recreation areas (groupings of campgrounds):

camply recreation-areas --provider ReserveCalifornia --search "Los Angeles"

If you want to look for more specific campgrounds to search:

camply campgrounds --provider ReserveCalifornia --search "Sonoma Coast"

And finally, searching for a campsite is very similar to RecreationDotGov:

camply campsites \
    --provider ReserveCalifornia \
    --start-date 2023-07-01 \
    --end-date 2023-08-01 \
    --rec-area 718 \
    --weekends

Note

ReserveCalifornia doesn't yet support searching / filtering by equipment.

Run camply as a CRON Job#

In some instances you don't want to run camply as a continuous, blocking Python process. Instead you might want to run camply as a CRON job that checks for a campsite every 30 minutes (*/30 * * * *). In this case you would use the --search-once option which enables continuous searching functionality (like sending notifications) without actually searching continuously.

Make sure to save your search results offline if running camply as a CRON job, this allows camply to save any campsites it finds between searches so that it only sends you a notification once:

camply campsites \
    --rec-area 2725 \
    --start-date 2023-07-10 \
    --end-date 2023-07-18 \
    --notifications email \
    --search-once \
    --offline-search

Send a webhook notification#

Camply supports sending notifications to a webhook URL. This can be useful if you want to integrate camply with services that accept webhooks, like IFTTT.

Webhook notifications require the WEBHOOK_URL environment variable / config value to be set. Optionally, you can also set the WEBHOOK_HEADERS config value to a JSON object containing any headers you want to send with the webhook POST request.

export WEBHOOK_URL="https://webhook.site/api/webhook"
export WEBHOOK_HEADERS='{"Authorization": "Bearer 1234"}'

Unless explicitly set otherwise, WEBHOOK_HEADERS will have Content-Type: application/json set.

camply campsites \
    --campground 232451 \
    --start-date 2023-09-10 \
    --end-date 2023-09-13 \
    --notifications webhook

The JSON POST body is an array of available campsites under a campsites key.

{
    "campsites": [
        {
            "campsite_id": 981,
            "booking_date": "2023-09-12T00:00:00",
            "booking_end_date": "2023-09-13T00:00:00",
            "booking_nights": 1,
            "campsite_site_name": "C",
            "campsite_loop_name": "Tent Only Group Area",
            "campsite_type": "GROUP TENT ONLY AREA NONELECTRIC",
            "campsite_occupancy": [13, 30],
            "campsite_use_type": "Overnight",
            "availability_status": "Available",
            "recreation_area": "Yosemite National Park, CA",
            "recreation_area_id": 2991,
            "facility_name": "Hodgdon Meadow Campground",
            "facility_id": 232451,
            "booking_url": "https://www.recreation.gov/camping/campsites/981",
            "permitted_equipment": [
                {
                    "equipment_name": "Tent",
                    "max_length": 0.0
                },
                {
                    "equipment_name": "Large Tent Over 9X12`",
                    "max_length": 0.0
                },
                {
                    "equipment_name": "Small Tent",
                    "max_length": 0.0
                }
            ],
            "campsite_attributes": [
                {
                    "attribute_category": "site_details",
                    "attribute_id": 11,
                    "attribute_name": "Checkin Time",
                    "attribute_value": "12:00 PM"
                },
                {
                    "attribute_category": "site_details",
                    "attribute_id": 56,
                    "attribute_name": "Min Num of People",
                    "attribute_value": "13"
                },
                {
                    "attribute_category": "site_details",
                    "attribute_id": 9,
                    "attribute_name": "Campfire Allowed",
                    "attribute_value": "Yes"
                }
            ]
        }
    ],
    "timestamp": "2023-09-10T01:57:00.729918+00:00"
}