Automatically Making Monthly Payments with Dusk

Laravel Dusk is a new feature coming to Laravel 5.4 and even though that release isn’t out, people have started using it. In fact, Jordan Dalton is now using it to automatically pay his monthly utility bill:

Okay, so Laravel dusk is pretty amazing. The other day I was making my utility payment online which I encountered my monthly frustration of “Why don’t these fools have an auto payment option.” If only I could emulate my steps to making to submit my payment. Then it dawned on me—I could use Laravel Dusk!

Jordan uses Automator, an AppleScript, and the Mac Calendar app to have it automatically pay his monthly bill. If you look at the actual implementation it’s pretty simple from the PHP side.

Seeing obscure uses like this is cool, and it shows how constraints can lead you to useful ideas. For more on Jordans setup and the complete list of steps check out his Github repo.