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Fully automated Chegg Discord bot for homework help. Working Dec 15, 2022

Recently, Chegg has made it difficult to automate retrieval of content from their website. They now use a service called PerimeterX that detects the usage of automation tools like Selenium when accessing the website.

This program demonstrates a way to circumvent these restrictions. It uses a virtual machine and fake keystrokes to simulate a real user on the website.

• Paid Chegg account (will need to sign in)
• A decent computer/server to run the VM
• Basic Python skills
• A Discord bot

Look up how to create a Discord bot, then add it to any server. The permissions required are Read and Send messages, Attach files, and Add reactions.

Download the free VMware Workstation 16 Player.

Grab the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft's website to create a .iso of Windows. You can also grab a Linux .iso instead, like Ubuntu. Create a new virtual machine using that .iso file and go through the setup process.

For Windows 10 setup, click on "I don't have a product key". When prompted to sign in with a Microsoft account, disconnect from the internet to create a local account with no password. Install VMware Tools, Chrome, and Python ( tested 3.9). Make sure to add Python to PATH when installing.

For Ubuntu 22.04, consider choosing the minimal installation option in the setup. Set any username and password. Make sure to click the box to enable automatic login on startup.

The bot opens the URL in Chrome, takes a screenshot using the GoFullPage shortcut, then sends the image in the same channel as the link. Afterwards, it closes the tab and deletes the image.

First, download Chrome. On Ubuntu, download the .deb, and install it using sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb. If you are prompted for a keyring password, leave it blank to make startup easier

Sign in to Chegg. Ensure the device is registered to the account by opening any homework-help link.

Install the GoFullPage extension from the Chrome web store. Right-click the icon, go to settings:

• Set Image format to jpg
• Set directory to screenshots
• Check Auto-download files
• Allow any permissions requested

Next, install Python.

On Ubuntu 22.04, run sudo apt-get install pip to install pip. Then, run sudo apt-get install python3-tk for tkinter, which is necessary for the keyboard library.

Download this repository as a zip and extract it anywhere. Add your bot's private key to key.txt. Open cheggbog.py and edit the "path" variable with the correct path for your system. On Linux, the path looks like "/home/[YOUR_USERNAME]/Downloads/screenshots/*.jpg"

Open a command prompt or terminal in the folder and install the required libraries.

On Windows 10, you may need to use py in place of python. On Ubuntu 22.04, use python3 in place of python.

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Finally, run the bot

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Keep at least 1 tab open while the bot is running to improve loading times

Make sure to disable automatic sleep and display turnoff in the settings of your system.

When running, the bot looks for links in any channel it can see, including DMs. Send any Chegg link and do not touch the virtual machine. The intended behavior is the following:

• Link sent, bot reacts with an emoji to show processing
• Bot opens link in Chrome, waits for a bit, then triggers the full page screenshot tool
• Once complete, bot replies to the link with image, closes the Chegg window, and deletes the image file
• Then, bot reacts to the link to indicate completion

In the cheggbog folder, create a new file called run.bat with the following contents

python cheggbog.py

Press Win+R and type shell:startup to access the startup programs folder. Create a shortcut to the run.bat file and drop it here, along with a shortcut to Chrome.

Install gnome-startup-applications using sudo apt-get gnome-startup-applications if it does not exist.

In the cheggbog folder, create a new file using touch startup.sh. Make it executable using chmod +x startup.sh. Open it in a text editor and add the following contents

#!/bin/bash
cd /home/[yourpathhere]/cheggbog/
python3 /home/[yourpathhere]/cheggbog/cheggbog.py

Open Startup Applications. Click Add. Set the name to Chrome. Set the command to google-chrome.

Click Add again. Set the name to cheggbog. Set the command to gnome-terminal -x bash -c "/home/[yourpathhere]/cheggbog/startup.sh"

On the Windows host, navigate to the VM (default C:\Users[User]\Documents\Virtual Machines[Your VM]). Create a .bat file with the following contents (substitute brackets)

"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\vmrun" -T player start "C:\Users\[User]\Documents\Virtual Machines\[Your VM]\[Your VM].vmx"

Create a shortcut to this file and place it in the shell:startup folder of the host

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