Purdue Housing 2023

This is a script to automatically search for open housing spots on the Purdue housing portal.

Notes:

Lower room rate should be the minimum rate of the room (default: $1,000).
Upper room rate should be the maximum rate of the room (default: $20,000).
Delay should be the delay, in milliseconds, the script waits before attempting to look for rooms again. Please keep this number reasonable; too many requests will crash the server and no one will get rooms.
Check the corresponding boxes for the buildings and room types you want to filter for. The script will indiscriminately attempt to add the first room it sees that matches the selected criteria to your cart, so make sure to only filter for rooms you would be OK with living in.

Using this script is a bit more complicated than just pasting it into the console in the housing portal; see the Using this script section for more details on how it works.

Lower room rate ($)

Upper room rate ($)

Delay (ms)

Code:

1const roomTypeIds = [165, 167, 166];
2const buildingIds = [1, 34, 16, 6, 4, 5];
3const lowerRoomRate = 1000;
4const upperRoomRate = 20000;
5const delay = 1000;
6
7let id;
8;(async () => {
9    // Parse URL token from search param after login
10    const params = new URLSearchParams(location.search);
11    const urlToken = params.get('UrlToken');
12
13    const dateStart = params.get('DateStart');
14    const dateEnd = params.get('DateEnd');
15    const termId = params.get('TermID');
16    const classificationId = params.get('ClassificationID');
17
18    const verificationToken = document.body.innerHTML.match(/<input name="__RequestVerificationToken" type="hidden" value="(.+)"\s*\/?>/)?.[1];
19    if (!verificationToken) return log('Could not parse request verification token!');
20
21    const data = document.body.innerHTML.match(/<div class="" data-actualaddingroomtocartoption=".*" data-canaddroomstocart=".*" data-classificationid=".+" data-currencysymbol=".*" data-currentpagenumber="(.+)" data-dateend="(.+)" data-datestart="(.+)" data-filterresultshash="(.+)" data-invalidfieldresponse=".*" data-isauthenticated=".*" data-lowerroomratevalue=".*" data-maximumroomratefilterarialabel=".*" data-maximumroomratefiltervalue=".*" data-minimumroomratefilterarialabel=".*" data-minimumroomratefiltervalue=".*" data-mustselectroommessage=".+" data-portalpageid=".+" data-portalrulestatus=".*" data-processid="(.+)" data-roombaseids=".*" data-roomrateid=".*" data-roomselectionpageid="(.*)" data-showfilterswithoutrooms=".*" data-termid=".+" data-unknowninvalidfieldresponse=".*" data-upperroomratevalue=".*" data-useroommateclassifications=".*" id="page-container">/)
22    if (!data) return log('Could not parse other page data!');
23    const [, currentPageNumber, dateEndISO, dateStartISO, filterHash, processId, roomSelectionPageId] = data;
24
25    // Construct filter request body
26    const filterBody = {
27        classificationID: Number(classificationId),
28        currentPageNumber: Number(currentPageNumber),
29        termID: Number(termId),
30        filters: {
31            DateStart: dateStartISO,
32            DateEnd: dateEndISO,
33            ProfileItemID: roomTypeIds, // Room type IDs
34            RoomLocationID: buildingIds, // Building IDs
35            RoomBaseIDs: [],
36            RoomLocationAreaID: [],
37            RoomLocationFloorSuiteID: [],
38            RoomTypeID: [],
39            UseRoommateClassifications: false,
40            LowerRoomRateValue: lowerRoomRate,
41            UpperRoomRateValue: upperRoomRate,
42        }
43    }
44
45    id = setInterval(queryRooms, delay);
46
47    async function queryRooms() {
48        const res = await fetch(`https://purdue.starrezhousing.com/StarRezPortalX/General/RoomSearch/roomsearch/GetFilterResultsAuthenticated?hash=${filterHash}&pageID=${roomSelectionPageId}&processID=${processId}`, {
49            method: 'POST',
50            body: JSON.stringify(filterBody),
51            headers: {
52                __RequestVerificationToken: verificationToken,
53                'Content-Type': 'application/json',
54                'X-Requested-With': 'XMLHttpRequest'
55            }
56        });
57        if (!res.ok) return log('Error while fetching filter endpoint');
58
59        const parsed = await res.json();
60        if (!('ResultsHtml' in parsed)) {
61            log('Error response when fetching filter endpoint');
62            return console.log(parsed);
63        }
64
65        console.log(parsed.ResultsHtml);
66
67        // Search HTML response for "add to cart" buttons
68        const matches = [...parsed.ResultsHtml.matchAll(/<button aria-label="Add (.+) To Cart" class="ui-add-room-to-cart sr_button_primary sr_button" data-hash="(.+)" data-url="(.+)" title="Add To Cart" type="button">.+<\/button>/g)];
69        if (!matches.length) return log('No rooms found');
70
71        for (const [, name, hash, url] of matches) {
72            log(`Found room ${name}`);
73
74            // Match room base and rate ID from broken url data param
75            const roomMatch = url.match(/roomBaseID=(.+?)&amp;roomRateID=(.+?)&amp;/);
76            if (!roomMatch) {
77                log(`Couldn't find base and rate ID for room ${name}`)
78                continue;
79            }
80
81            // Add room to cart
82            const [, roomBaseId, roomRateId] = roomMatch;
83            const res = await fetch(`https://purdue.starrezhousing.com/StarRezPortalX/General/RoomSearch/roomsearch/AddRoomToCartForTerm?hash=${hash}&checkInDate=${dateStartISO}&checkOutDate=${dateEndISO}&termID=${termId}&pageID=${roomSelectionPageId}&roomBaseID=${roomBaseId}&roomRateID=${roomRateId}`, {
84                method: 'POST',
85                body: JSON.stringify({}),
86                headers: {
87                    __RequestVerificationToken: verificationToken,
88                    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
89                    'X-Requested-With': 'XMLHttpRequest'
90                }
91            });
92            if (!res.ok) {
93                log(`Error adding room ${name} to cart`);
94                continue;
95            }
96
97            // Construct next page request body
98            const continueBody = {
99                RoomLocationID: buildingIds,
100                ProfileItemID: roomTypeIds,
101                PageWidgetData: []
102            }
103            for (const id of [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 33, 34])
104                continueBody[`${id}-checkbox`] = buildingIds.includes(id);
105            for (const id of [165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 198])
106                continueBody[`${id}-checkbox`] = roomTypeIds.includes(id);
107
108            // Fetch next page URL and open it in a new tab if everything is successful
109            const checkoutRawUrl = await (await fetch(window.location.href, {
110                method: 'POST',
111                body: JSON.stringify(continueBody),
112                headers: {
113                    __RequestVerificationToken: verificationToken,
114                    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
115                    'X-Requested-With': 'XMLHttpRequest'
116                }
117            })).text();
118
119            window.open(checkoutRawUrl.slice(1, -1).replaceAll('\\u0026', '&'));
120            clearInterval(id);
121        }
122    }
123})();
124
125function log(m) {
126    console.log(`[${new Date().toLocaleTimeString()}]: ${m}`);
127}

Using this script

Because of how the housing portal's request hashes and dynamic routes work, this script only works on the List Rooms page (ie. the page that looks like the image on the right):

Left: Initial Selection page with no rooms available; Right: List Rooms page

If you have navigated to the Initial Selection page (left) but cannot go further due to there being no available rooms, run the following code in the console to jump to the next page:

Code:

1const rawUrl = await (await fetch(window.location.href, {
2    method: 'POST',
3    body: JSON.stringify({PageWidgetData: []})
4})).text()
5
6window.location = rawUrl.slice(1, -1).replaceAll('\\u0026', '&');

Once you're at the list rooms page, copying the original script into your console should start the room search process.

The script sends a lot of logs in the console, mostly for debugging purposes. You'll know the script has found a room when it starts opening a bunch of tabs (an imperfect solution, but one that works given the time constraints and limited opportunities to test it). These tabs will be the bed assignment pages for the room the script has just added to your cart; wait for one to load, fill it out as normal, and pray that the request goes through. Remember to hit confirm as normal on the proceeding page as well.

Other things to note

During execution, the script makes a request to the filter rooms endpoint (the same one the list rooms webpage uses) every delay milliseconds. If, for whatever reason, you want to stop sending new requests, you can clear the interval with

Code:

1clearInterval(id)

Note that at peak times, response times from the API will greatly exceed the rate at which the script makes new fetches to it (the worst I've seen were response times of almost 3 minutes). Clearing the interval does not prevent fetches that are still pending from resolving, only the creation of new ones. The list of pending requests can easily range in the thousands during peak times; to clear all requests immediately, reload the page or close the tab.

If, during execution, you want to add or remove buildings or room types from your filter, simply mutate the roomTypeIds and buildingIds arrays directly:

Code:

1buildingIds.push(1) // Add Cary to the building id filter

Code:

1roomTypeIds.splice(i, 1) // Remove one id from the room type filter, where `i` is the index of the element to remove

The full list of IDs corresponding to buildings and rooms can be referenced here:

Building name	Building ID
Cary Quadrangle	1
Earhart	2
First Street Towers	3
Frieda Parker	34
Harrison	4
Hawkins	5
Hillenbrand	6
Honors	17
McCutcheon	8
Meredith	9
Meredith South	33
Owen	10
Shreve	12
Tarkington	13
Wiley	14
Windsor	15
Winifred Parker	16

Room type	Room type ID
Apartment	166
Double	165
Quad	198
Single	169
Suite	167
Triple	168