LaLiga bot: automating with GitHub Actions

The whole system was built and working locally. What was missing was what makes it “serverless”: having GitHub run the script for me every X hours and pass it the credentials without exposing them.

The workflow

I created .github/workflows/sincronizar.yml. It has two triggers: a schedule with cron and a workflow_dispatch to run it by hand from the UI (essential for testing without waiting for the scheduled time).

name: Sincronización de Calendario y Alertas

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 */4 * * *'
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  run-bot:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Configurar el Repositorio
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Configurar Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: '3.11'
          cache: 'pip'

      - name: Instalar Dependencias
        run: |
          python -m pip install --upgrade pip
          pip install -r requirements.txt

      - name: Ejecutar Bot de Sincronización
        env:
          GOOGLE_CALENDAR_ID: ${{ secrets.GOOGLE_CALENDAR_ID }}
          GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON: ${{ secrets.GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON }}
          TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN }}
          TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID: ${{ secrets.TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID }}
          EQUIPO_OBJETIVO: ${{ secrets.EQUIPO_OBJETIVO }}
          URL_LIV_DIVISION: ${{ secrets.URL_LIV_DIVISION }}
        run: python main.py

The env block injects the repository secrets as environment variables on the runner. That’s why in main.py we read everything with os.environ.get(...).

Repository secrets

I created them under Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions in the repo:

Secret	Description
EQUIPO_OBJETIVO	Exact team name as it appears on the El Mundo site.
URL_LIV_DIVISION	URL of the Primera or Segunda División calendar.
GOOGLE_CALENDAR_ID	Google calendar identifier.
GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON	Full service account JSON.
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN	Bot token from @BotFather.
TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID	Numeric ID of your Telegram chat.

Cron and the UTC trap

GitHub Actions runs cron schedules in UTC, not Spanish time. And Spain changes time zone:

• During daylight saving (March–October) it’s UTC+2.
• During standard time (October–March) it’s UTC+1.

If you want the script to run at 8 and 20 in peninsular time during winter, the UTC cron must be '0 7,19 * * *'.

Lesson: GitHub cron jobs run in UTC and, on top of that, GitHub doesn’t guarantee precise timing: an hourly job can be delayed 15–30 minutes depending on load. Also, don’t abuse high frequencies (for example every 5 minutes), because shared-use policies can block your repository’s Actions. For a sports calendar, every 4 hours is more than enough.

Local development with .env

Locally I don’t want to copy the secrets every time. I used python-dotenv: I create a .env file at the root and the script loads it on startup.

from dotenv import load_dotenv

load_dotenv()  # On GitHub Actions there's no .env: it uses the secrets

The .env goes in .gitignore so credentials never reach the repo:

.env
.venv/
__pycache__/

And requirements.txt ended up like this:

requests
beautifulsoup4
google-auth
google-api-python-client
python-dotenv

The result

The full flow is: the cron starts the environment → main.py scrapes the El Mundo calendar → compares with Google Calendar → updates if there’s a change → alerts on Telegram when appropriate. All with no servers and no cost, from a repository called laliga-calendar-sync-bot.

Final lesson: parameterizing the team through environment variables turned a bot built for one specific club into a reusable project: anyone can fork it, set their team and division, and have the same system running.

End of the series!