Ticketsatwork

When to use

• Comparing hotel rates for a specific destination + dates against direct / portal / Booking
• After narrowing to a hotel via Trivago / Google Hotels, check if TaW has the chosen property cheaper
• Discovering which theme-park / attraction discounts TaW currently offers (the discounts rotate seasonally)
• Verifying a "this is the best deal" claim before booking through Chase Travel / Amex Travel / direct

When NOT to use

• The hotel is in Amex FHR / THC and the user wants the property credit + breakfast (the program stack usually beats TaW's nightly savings)
• The user wants hotel-program elite credits or points (TaW bookings don't credit Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, etc.)
• The user needs a flexible/refundable rate (TaW rates are often non-refundable; check the property detail page)
• Bookings where elite-status benefits matter more than rate

Implementation gotchas (for future maintainers)

These are documented for future work. The scripts already handle them.

Login via JS, not modal

The visible "Sign in / Register" button opens a modal containing the real login form. The trigger is sometimes invisible to Patchright (overlay z-index, OneTrust banner). The form is in the DOM regardless. We set values directly via JS and click submit.

const form = document.querySelector('#member_login_form');
const emailEl = form.querySelector('input[name="login_email"]');
const passEl = form.querySelector('input[name="login_password"]');
// ...set values, dispatch input/change events, click submit

Destination autocomplete is jQuery UI + ElasticSearch

The destination input (#place_name for hotels, #pickup_location for cars) is decorative until a suggestion is clicked. Hidden lat/lng fields populate on click via the autocomplete's callback.

Selectors (hotels):

• Suggestion dropdown: .ui-autocomplete.ebg-autocomplete .ui-menu-item:visible
• Lat: #place_lat, Lng: #place_lng

Selectors (cars):

• Same dropdown class
• Visible: #pickup_location, #dropoff_location
• Hidden value: #origin_search_value, #destination_search_value
• Hidden latlng (combined): #origin_lat_lng, #destination_lat_lng

Race condition: First-type often misses. Retry up to 3 times, clearing the field each time. Each attempt waits up to 8s for the targets to populate.

Cars-specific: Latlng populates reliably; the canonical place value field doesn't always populate via callback. The script backfills it from the visible input text. This is enough for the form to submit but may not be enough for the car backend to resolve an airport code.

Date inputs are readonly

#check_in, #check_out, #pick_up_date, #drop_off_date are readonly="readonly" and driven by jQuery datepicker. You cannot fill() them like normal inputs. Set .value via JS using the underlying HTMLInputElement.value setter.

Date format: MM/DD/YY (2-digit year).

Hotel listings render after the shell

Results page shell loads first; listings render via XHR. Wait for at least one <li id="hotel_..." data-name="..."> to be attached to the DOM. Without this, parse fires too early and returns 0 listings.

Hotel listings are pre-rendered

The full result set is delivered in the initial response. Pagination is purely visual via simple-pagination. Don't waste time clicking page links; one parse on the initial render gets you everything.

Cars use Handlebars templates filled later

Car results use a Handlebars-style template page. The page renders immediately with {{var}} placeholders, then a backend XHR fills in actual offers. Wait for .rc-totals content to no longer match {{total}} before parsing.

Cookie banner

OneTrust banner appears on first visit and intercepts clicks. Dismiss via button#onetrust-accept-btn-handler or button:has-text('Accept') early in the flow.

Tickets / category pages are static HTML

Unlike hotels and cars, category landing pages render their deal grid in the initial HTML response. No XHR wait needed. Cards are <li class="grid-template-seen"> with data-unq (URL) and inline title/subtitle/description.

Building the Docker image

cd skills/ticketsatwork
docker build -t ghcr.io/borski/ticketsatwork:latest .
docker push ghcr.io/borski/ticketsatwork:latest

The base image (ghcr.io/borski/patchright-docker:latest) is shared with southwest, chase-travel, amex-travel, and other Patchright-based skills.

Privacy / safety

• Do NOT book through this skill. Price discovery only. Always click through to TaW in a real browser to complete a booking.
• TaW's terms of service may restrict automated access. The skill makes one search per invocation, doesn't aggressively crawl, and uses one page-load worth of work. Use for personal price comparison, not bulk scraping.
• Credentials are passed via env vars only. The skill never writes credentials to disk and never prints them to logs.
• Debug output may contain personal data. TaW embeds the logged-in user's email, employer, IP, and account hash in the result page HTML. The script never prints these, but --debug mode and --raw-html-out capture full page HTML which contains them. Don't share debug artifacts publicly.

Future expansions

• search-shopping for gift cards, electronics, etc. (/tickets/shopping.php?sub=...)
• search-packages for vacation bundles (/tickets/packages.php?sub=packages&action=view&id=N)
• fix-cars to resolve the airport-code population issue
• with-prices mode for tickets that follows each detail_url to extract pricing (slow, multi-page)