/alexa-bookkeeper

Check bank/loan/credit card balances from Alexa, via Mint

Primary LanguagePHP

Alexa Bookkeeper

Ever wanted to check your bank/credit card/loan balances through Alexa? This tool makes it easy.

Requirements

You'll need:

  • A server capable of running Python/Pip and PHP
  • A Mint account, with your accounts connected
  • An SSL certificate properly configured on your server

Setup

  1. Install mintapi on your server
  2. Rename example.mint.json to .mint.json and move it to a safe place outside of your webroot. Add your Mint credentials to the file
  3. Rename example.config.json to .config.json and update the paths
  4. Set the relative path to your Mint credentials file (.mint.json) in refresh.py, and configure a cron job on your server to run it once or twice daily (don't run it too frequently, or Mint will lock your account; see "Caveats and notes" below)
  5. Create a new Alexa skill in the Amazon Developers portal, pointing to your alexa-bookkeeper.php file
  6. ...
  7. Profit!

Caveats and notes

  • You'll need to store your Mint credentials on your server, as Mint doesn't offer a true API/OAuth.
  • To 'hide' an account from the script, give it the title "ignore" in Mint.
  • Be careful while testing; Mint rate-limits logins and will force a password reset or lockout if you try to log in too frequently.
  • The mintapi Python script could break at any time, breaking all of this. No promises.

License

© 2016 Chris Van Patten.

Licensed under the terms of the CC0 public domain license.