I’ve recently had to hastily pass my practical driving test as my theory test certificate was about to expire. It’s a little well known fact that some areas are well known for their long waiting periods. Hello Isleworth in London. There’s a 1-2 month waiting list as standard for that test center, which is just too long and would tip me over my theory expiration date.

So I decided to book any date (to have a failsafe, plus a booking reference is required to update a booking), and whip up a little script that logs into the DSA booking service, search for better dates in 2 areas (Ashford and Isleworth for me) and email me if anything good pops up.

The script is written in Python and uses the great BeautifulSoup library. It’s a little rough around the edges as I didn’t plan on releasing it, and I’m certain that the code is nowhere near its potential beauty and elegance. My apologies!

Download: dsa.py

I haven’t tested it on Windows (and doubt it would work on it without some tweaking), I’ve only tested it on Linux and Mac OS. If you need a hand at running it, leave a comment. I found and booked a test in Isleworth that was 10 days away on the 2nd day of running the script.