Under the hood for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals

More of the gory details of how information gets into PlanningAlerts. This is here so you can see and learn how it's done but also so you are able to fix things and see in detail what isn't working.

The steps to getting data into Planning Alerts

Applications are published on the Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals website in a human readable, non-structured form.
The latest scraper code on Github is loaded by our scraping platform morph.io.
The scraper planningalerts-scrapers/spear on our scraping platform morph.io collects the information daily and converts it into a machine-readable format.
If the scraper errors anyone who is watching the scraper on morph.io gets informed via a daily email alert.
The machine readable data is validated, imported and geocoded by PlanningAlerts daily. If there are any validation errors on an application, the application is skipped and the error is logged. See below for the most recent logs.
The information is published on PlanningAlerts, made available via the API, and people are informed of new applications via email alerts.

Most recent import logs

Error Parameter 'description': Expected type String, got type NilClass
Caller: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:59
Definition: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:119 (Application.normalise_description) while trying to save application S236893J for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals, VIC. So, skipping
Error Parameter 'description': Expected type String, got type NilClass
Caller: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:59
Definition: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:119 (Application.normalise_description) while trying to save application S236895B for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals, VIC. So, skipping
Error Parameter 'description': Expected type String, got type NilClass
Caller: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:59
Definition: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:119 (Application.normalise_description) while trying to save application S238906B for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals, VIC. So, skipping
Error Parameter 'description': Expected type String, got type NilClass
Caller: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:59
Definition: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:119 (Application.normalise_description) while trying to save application S238859M for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals, VIC. So, skipping
Error Parameter 'description': Expected type String, got type NilClass
Caller: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:59
Definition: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:119 (Application.normalise_description) while trying to save application S238857V for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals, VIC. So, skipping
Error Parameter 'description': Expected type String, got type NilClass
Caller: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:59
Definition: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:119 (Application.normalise_description) while trying to save application S227731V for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals, VIC. So, skipping
Error Parameter 'description': Expected type String, got type NilClass
Caller: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:59
Definition: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:119 (Application.normalise_description) while trying to save application S238893M for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals, VIC. So, skipping
Error Parameter 'description': Expected type String, got type NilClass
Caller: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:59
Definition: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:119 (Application.normalise_description) while trying to save application S238643P for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals, VIC. So, skipping
Error Parameter 'description': Expected type String, got type NilClass
Caller: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:59
Definition: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:119 (Application.normalise_description) while trying to save application S238639T for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals, VIC. So, skipping
Error Parameter 'description': Expected type String, got type NilClass
Caller: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:59
Definition: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:119 (Application.normalise_description) while trying to save application S238891V for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals, VIC. So, skipping
Error Parameter 'description': Expected type String, got type NilClass
Caller: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:59
Definition: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:119 (Application.normalise_description) while trying to save application S235869P for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals, VIC. So, skipping
Error Parameter 'description': Expected type String, got type NilClass
Caller: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:59
Definition: /srv/www/production/releases/20241122004519/app/models/application.rb:119 (Application.normalise_description) while trying to save application S238923B for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals, VIC. So, skipping
367 applications found for Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals, VIC with date from 2024-11-18

What you can do next

If something isn't right with the scraper or the data coming in then you could do one or several of the following:

Report or view scraper issues
Fork the scraper on Github and try to fix it
If it's an issue with the council website, then contact Streamlined Planning through Electronic Applications and Referrals
Contact us for help

If everything is working fine right now but you want to help if something goes wrong:

Watch the scraper on morph.io, so you will get an email if it errors. Press the "Watch" button in the top right while you're logged in to morph.io.
View any scraper issues. Help fix them or comment on them if they are out of date