Meetup Event Radar

A static GitHub Pages dashboard for tracking public Meetup events across selected London tech groups.

The browser app does not scrape Meetup directly. Instead:

1. scripts/scrape-meetup.js runs in GitHub Actions or locally.
2. It fetches public /events/ pages and public event pages.
3. It writes data/events.json.
4. index.html + app.js load that local JSON file and render the dashboard.

This avoids browser CORS issues and means GitHub Pages can host the app without a live Node server.

Watched Meetup groups

The scraper reads the watched groups from groups.yml:

groups:
  - https://www.meetup.com/london-devops/
  - https://www.meetup.com/devsecops-london-gathering/

Add or remove one public Meetup group URL per line.

Local usage

npm run scrape
npm run build
npm run serve

npm run serve hosts the rebuilt public/ artifact.

Then open:

http://localhost:8080

GitHub Pages usage

1. Push this folder to a GitHub repository.
2. In GitHub, go to Settings → Pages.
3. Set the Pages source to GitHub Actions.
4. Go to Actions → Update Meetup Events → Run workflow to generate the first data/events.json.
5. The scheduled workflow then refreshes the JSON and deploys the rebuilt static site every 12 hours.

How the scheduled refresh works

.github/workflows/update-events.yml runs:

npm run scrape
npm run build

It writes data/events.json, builds a fresh public/ artifact containing the static frontend and updated JSON, commits data/events.json back to the repository if it changed, and deploys the artifact to GitHub Pages.

Configuration

Environment variables supported by the scraper:

Variable	Default	Purpose
DAYS_AHEAD	90	Only include events within this many days
MAX_EVENT_PAGES_PER_GROUP	30	Limit event page fetches per group
GROUPS_PATH	groups.yml	YAML file containing watched Meetup group URLs
REQUEST_DELAY_MS	1500	Delay between requests
REQUEST_TIMEOUT_MS	25000	HTTP timeout per request
USER_AGENT	built-in	User-Agent header for requests

Notes and limitations

• This only uses public Meetup pages.
• It does not use Meetup OAuth or Meetup Pro API access.
• It does not collect attendee emails, member details, private comments, or private group data.
• Meetup can change its frontend markup, so the scraper may need occasional maintenance.
• Keep request volume low and respectful.

Files

meetup-event-radar/
├── index.html
├── styles.css
├── app.js
├── data/
│   └── events.json
├── scripts/
│   ├── build-static.js
│   ├── groups-config.js
│   └── scrape-meetup.js
├── .github/
│   └── workflows/
│       └── update-events.yml
├── groups.yml
├── .gitignore
├── .nojekyll
├── package-lock.json
├── package.json
└── README.md