A command line tool that watches desired forum threads and on a given interval, creates a Macos notification badge if new messages have been posted.

1. You need to have uv installed.
2. Built to work with phpBB version 3.2.2.

First, create a phpbbnotifier.config.toml file:

[forum-name]
    baseurl = "base-url-for-forum"
    [forum-name.sub-forum-name]
        id = sub-forum-id
        threads = [thread-id-1, thread-id-2, ...]

Note: You can't use spaces in the forum or sub forum names. The names are for your organisation only, they are not used anywhere in the script currently.

You can add multiple forums, subforums and threads to go through.

Make the script executable with

chmod +x phpbb-notifier

Then, start the script with

./phpbb-notifier

and it will run every 5 minutes and add a notification banner if new posts have been made.

You can adjust the behaviour with two command-line flags:

./phpbb-notifier --config=PATH_TO_CONFIG_FILE

will override the default configuration file location and

./phpbb-notifier --interval=120

will override the time that is spent between checks.

If any URLs return 4xx or 5xx status codes, they will be removed from the checks until restarted.