Portal Update Checker

Portal Update Checker works with portals that are somehow associated with "technosolutions.net". They are usually the ones that send you a Pin code to your email when your application is recieved, and to set up the portal, you have to enter date of birth then set up a password. As a rule of thumb, to see if a university is supported open the email where you got the portal info, and see the link that leads you to the portal. If the link has "mx.technosolutions", then you're good to go. If not, see if the portal fits the features below.

Login Page #top

Log in page is the best method for verifying if a portal is supported. The image above is the login page for Brown, and pretty much all other portals have similar ones. In particular, there are these common features.

• 1 There's a message right above the email address with a green streak that says "To log in, please enter your email address and password."
• 2 The "Forgot your password" link is right next to the password field.
• 3 The size of the login button may differ, but its color is usually a shade of grey.

Status page #top

Status pages can be very different. Usually, there's a checklist detailing application checklist and their statuses like the one above. Some might not. There's also usually a section called "Verify Adress", where your mailing address is listed.

Update page - #top

ALL(there's no exception in this one) supported portals have an update page,whether or not you have recieved any updates. If you haven't heard a decision back yet, the update looks like the one in the picture above. If you've got a decision, you get a page that contains the decision letter.

Getting to the update page is a bit tricky. Unless you've got your decisions back, there's no link to the update page on the portal status page. You'll need to use a bit of URL modification, which I've explained down here

An update page is where your decision will most likely be released, and it's also the page Portal Update Checker will use to see if there's any update to your application.

An update page's url ends with a '/update.'. To get the update url, login to your portal, and reach the main page of the portal(The status where you have the checklists) and copy the url of the status page from your browser's address bar. For Brown, it's "https://apply.college.brown.edu/apply/status". Replace "status" in the URL with "update". The URL for Brown should now look like "https://apply.college.brown.edu/apply/update". Go to this url,(you might need to log in again) and if your get to a page that simply says "There is no update to your application status to report. ", or displays your decision letter, then that's your update URL. If you get to page that says "404" error there's something wrong with your URL.

The URL structure for the update page of all portals is {whatever}.edu/apply/update. The {whatever} section can be anything from "apply" to "engage" or "myapplication", depedning upon the university. Just copy the URL of the status page and change the "status" part to "update", and that should lead you the update page.

Main Window #back to top

Portal Update Checker is a very sophisticated application containing not just three, but four buttons in its Main Window. Three of these buttons load up a dialog, and each dialog has its own set of functions. Isn't it wonderful how far technology has come?

Set Login Credential#back to top

Set Login Credential does exactly what it sounds like. You enter your email and password, and the program stores it in a database called "Database.db"(Can't get any more orignial than this) that is locally stored in the same folder as your python/executable file. The program will use this login credentials for logging into your portals.

Add Universities #back to top

Add Universities is where you add the names and URL of the university that you need to get the updates of. It has two basic inputs, "Uni Name" and "URL". You can put whatever name you want in "Uni Name" field, it's just for your reference, so go crazy with UC Hicago, "Stanford", or whatever overused meme you want..

The URL field is very important as this is the url that will be requested when the program tries to log in. Put only update URLs. More info here.

The data you input here will also be stored in the same database as your login credentials, i.e. the creatively named "Database.db" If, for some reason, you need to delete your database, please note that the list of your universities will also be deleted.

See Result #back to top

This is where you obsessively check for any update to your application. Select a single college from the list, or "All" to include every college on your list and click on the "Submit" button. Your updates will be displayed in the text area below.

DELETE #back to top

This insidious looking all-caps DELETE button deltes your previous user credentials. It does not do anything to your university list. If for some reason you changed your email/password or maybe you entered a wrong email/password while setting your login credentials, the DELETE button deletes it, so you can set up a new one.

Code released under the MIT License