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Great read! This reminds me of a macOS app I made for my wife a few years back. It keeps track of the opening hours of all her favorite shops, and she can click a menu bar icon to see how long until each one closes today. It also warns if it's currently peak/rush hour for the shop, since she prefers to go when it's less crowded.

It's a simple Qt app that uses a text file for data storage. I wrote it after noticing that she had trouble remembering which shops are open when. I asked her what to call it, and she said "Gladiolus, like the flower" so I named it Gladiolus.

I can say for sure I've never had a more appreciative client as a programmer than the one user of Gladiolus :^)




This is incredible, thank you for sharing.


What if a store’s hours change?


Talk to the Manager and tell them their change has broken your application.


You change the file. Simple!


I like it. I of course was running through all kinds of scraping scenarios… which is why you got the app done and I didn’t,


Just to let you know, that wasn't the original commentor, so it could stil involve scrpaing (which is what I expected, too).


I would guess using Google's Places API. They have busy time reports and hours that are most likely updated by the business owner. No scraping needed


Busy Time is actually not available to the places API. It’s one of the top request features though. There’s a legal/PII dimension to the issue.

Open Hours though are easy to read from the json response.


Not a Googler but I would expect busy hours graph being generated by Android Location Services data.


This resonates with me...




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