FAB Calendar Automation Project: Automating the Flesh and Blood Event Feed

After getting my network and server dialed in, I wanted to put that stability to work doing something useful - something that solved a real problem I deal with every week.

For anyone in the Flesh and Blood TCG community, the official event site lists everything, but it is not designed for quick reference or notifications. I wanted one unified, automatically updating calendar - something I could subscribe to on my phone or share with my playgroup.

GitHub: https://github.com/chaco-win/fab-events-sync
Live calendar: https://fabevents.chaco.dev

Why This Project

One place to see competitive events without digging through pages.
Shareable, phone-friendly calendar that updates itself.
Discord notifications so groups stay informed automatically.
Built to run unattended: containers, health checks, and logs.

The Goal

Create a fully automated system that:

Scrapes new Flesh and Blood events from FABTCG.com
Parses and normalizes event data (name, date, location, format)
Publishes them to a shared calendar and web frontend
Notifies users through Discord when new events are added
Monitors itself and reports any issues automatically

Containerized, version-controlled, and built to survive without babysitting.

The Stack

A small Docker Compose stack on my home server:

/srv/docker/fab-calendar/
- docker-compose.yml
- scraper/
  - main.py
  - requirements.txt
- logs/

The scraper handles scraping, parsing, and syncing via the Google Calendar API. It is lightweight, stateless, and auto-restarts if something fails.

services:
  fab-calendar:
    build: ./scraper
    volumes:
      - ./logs:/logs
    environment:
      - GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS_JSON=/config/creds.json
      - DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL=${DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL}
    restart: always

How It Works

Scraping: pulls FABTCG’s event listings and parses them into structured JSON. Filters by format (ProQuest, Battle Hardened, Nationals) and skips duplicates.
Calendar Sync: authenticates with a Google service account and updates the shared public calendar at fabevents.chaco.dev.
Discord Notifications: posts a formatted message to Discord via webhook or bot token when new events are detected.
Health Monitoring: logs to /logs/fab-calendar.log and records status for weekly health checks.

Weekly Health Checks

Every Sunday morning a separate process verifies:

The scraper ran successfully within the past week
The last calendar update timestamp is valid
No repeated errors in the logs

If anything fails, a Discord notification fires automatically.

[HealthCheck] Last run: 2025-09-07 06:00 UTC
[HealthCheck] Calendar updated successfully (45 total events)
[HealthCheck] No errors detected

Discord Integration and Notifications

When events are updated:

FAB Calendar Updated
3 new events found:
- ProQuest: Dallas, TX
- Battle Hardened: Sydney, AUS
- Nationals: New Zealand

If the scraper fails:

FAB Calendar ERROR
Traceback: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'find'

Future Plans: Public Discord Bot

Next phase: a public Discord bot anyone can invite. It will use the same backend but expose slash commands.

Planned features:

/fab upcoming - list upcoming events by region or format
/fab subscribe - subscribe to notifications for types/regions
/fab remind - automated reminders (e.g., Monday before)
/fab optout - unsubscribe from categories
/fab health - scraper uptime and last update status

Challenges and Lessons Learned

Cloudflare rate limits: randomized delays, caching, and backoff to avoid being flagged
Timezones: everything converted to UTC to prevent offsets
Token management: automatic key rotation for Google API tokens
Webhook spam: deduplicate by event ID

Why It Works in My Setup

Hosted in Docker on mirrored ZFS for redundancy
Uses Pi-hole for DNS and logging visibility
Exposed securely through Cloudflare Tunnel - no open ports
Snapshotted and backed up weekly

It is stable, isolated, and low-maintenance - exactly what I wanted.

Looking Ahead

Source: https://github.com/chaco-win/fab-events-sync
Calendar: https://fabevents.chaco.dev

Next steps:

Launch the public Discord bot
Add customizable reminders for local stores/leagues
Build a small dashboard for curation and feedback