We have a nice little lifehack for Playstation 4 owners to use. Basically, you can set up an alert to get an email every time PSN drops its prices. A little warning though, you will need to know Python.
PSN, which is really now SEN or Sony Entertainment network, uses CIDs to identify items in its catalogue. What this is is a Python script that will read those CIDs when prices have changed and alert you.
Usage
Mail alerting
Just run python psnmailalert.py for mail alerting. See example below.
Command line interface
usage: psncli.py [-h] [--id ID] [--container CONTAINER] [--store STORE] [--price PRICE] [--query QUERY] optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit --id ID, -i ID CID of game to check --container CONTAINER, -c CONTAINER Container to list --store STORE, -s STORE regional PSN store to check. Default: 'DE/de' --price PRICE, -p PRICE desired price of game --query QUERY, -q QUERY Name of item tosearch for
Retrieving UTF-8 encoded output on terminals
You may have to tell Python that your terminal is capable of dealing with UTF-8 outputs. Some PSN items are annoted with trademark, copyright or foreign language specific symbols. To do so set exportPYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8in your terminal window.
Example
You may run this script with the following command line variants:
Mail alerting – Get a mail when alerts have been met
With psnmailalert.py you may set alerts for price drops in the alerts.csv file. The first value is the CID for the item, the second is the price to be matched in order to alert you by mail, and the second value is the store to search in. You may mix stores in the alerts.csv. After a price has been matched, the alert is removed from alerts.csv. You will not get any further alerts for that item.
EP0001-NPEJ00305_00-B000000000001030,19.00,DE/de EP0101-ULES01372_00-GPCMETALGE000001,10.00,DE/de
In order to receive mails you have to set your account settings in the file mailconfig.json. Seemailconfig.json_example for an example config.
To run psnmailalert.py, just type:
./psnmailalert.py
