[iRail] open transit feeds

flo orangeman at teleportr.org
Fri Aug 6 15:05:14 UTC 2010


Hi Christophe, Hi irail-subscribers

"having a full choice of application for each country would be a nice
choice for the user better than one big software"
very well said! it's all about choice :-)

do I understand correctly: you are different transit app devellopers
teaming up to establish some level of interoperability in this space?
This http://wiki.github.com/Tuinslak/iRail/api is a first proposal for
a standard API?
It already looks quite decent in my eyes :-) and I definitely support
your ambitions!

"We don't want to rewrite something that you might have already
created... and would like to know a little bit about your project"
nothing in this regard has been created around teleportr.org  so far
as it is merely intended to become kind of a "mobility browser" that
facilitates comparing and handling different modes of transportation
via different external apps, websites or services. after clicking on a
search result the user is taken somewhere else for details and
proceeding. for example a webbrowser, a turn-by-turn navigation app, a
ridesharing agency webwidget or a bike rental site.. one of the nice
things in the android runtime is that "inter-app-mashability" of
different (lously coupled, late runtime bound) "components" via
intents and tasks. Thus like you said there is not one big app but
rather many independent pieces that interoperate and work+play
together. The current transit plugin is really just a placeholder. a
simple regex on-device to get some links of websites for further
information http://dev.c-base.org/teleportr/client/blobs/master/src/org/teleportr/plugin/BahnDePlugIn.java
In the long term it is much more desired to integrate with real
transit-apps. Plz feel free to scotty-subscribe at teleportr.org and
discuss the intent api..

Afaik "Öffi" (the defacto standard transit app in germany) from
Andreas Schildbach (cc) does some server-side scraping with an api for
the mobile app. Maybe you want to talk regarding standardization..

there was some recent discussion on
transit-developers at googlegroups.com and talk-transit at openstreetmap.org
about opendata and standards. iirc
http://www.travelinedata.org.uk/datausers.htm opened up a lot for UK
and MTA (new yourk) was discussing some standard formats called SIRI
and TCIP. Is this something similar to gtfs??
http://opentripplaner.org seems to be a nice collection of opensource
tools to process such schedule-formats and provides an api for mobile
applications. maybe thats also worth looking at...

Betrains has really become a great app. props! It does't just provide
timetables but much more thoroughly guides through the entire
traveling process/experience.. I did't know as I live in germany ;-)
so there it is our common itch to scratch...

looking forward to hearing from you..
greets!
flo




    From: Christophe Versieux <christophe.versieux at gmail.com>
    To: flo <orangeman at teleportr.org>
    Sent: Fri, August 6, 2010 3:01:27 PM
    Subject: Re: api

    Hello!

    I am currently working on this with a few other people from
Belgium and I contacted the developer of the Android application in
France.

    The french guy made his own API a few month ago, and we are now
working together to create some "rules" for API all over the world.
That's why I was trying to contact you again ( too much email
adresses, I think I lost yours, that's why I "tweeted" for a contact
lol ).

    We don't want to rewrite something that you might have already created.

    As the API is not "country limited" I strongly believe that having
a full choice of application for each country would be a nice choice
for the user better than one big software.

    We created a mailing list: iRail mailing list <irail at list.irail.be>
    Feel free to join.

    and would like to know a little bit about your projects. We cannot
find any website/informations except for the Twitter account.
    I think that you told me about people involved in Spain, Italy,
and maybe in other countries too?

    For now, you can find the main status of our project on these 2 links:

    http://wiki.github.com/Tuinslak/iRail/api
    http://github.com/Tuinslak/iRail/

    I can also provide the API for an "instant messenger" software
that I use in my Android app.
    I do not want to open it, because I made some protections in
purpose to avoid spamming.

    You can see the feed in this twitter account: http://twitter.com/betrains
    This feed within the application is filtered for every train, so
you can really speak with other trains users!
    That is very exciting and users love that so much.

    In my application I added some more informations that I would like
to share too ( see below)
    They are not in the API (yet)

    Hope you love it.

    Christophe Versieux
    Belgium



    1) All stops and delay of one particular train:

    Picture: http://img.skitch.com/20100806-nu7ey7i1m2axw61qcu9xx6spfs.jpg

    Informations:

        * Grey symbol at the left: Where is the train in real time,
canceled stops, extra stops
        * Station Name
        * Planned time of arrival at the station
        * Delay


    2) Next departures in a particular station:

    Picture: http://img.skitch.com/20100806-85cgpqbrp8ni2jiqxfun37qaf.jpg

    Informations:

        * in Blue: the gate where the train will arrive
        * Name of the destination of each train
        * ID of each train
        * Delay

    3) GPS Coordinate of one train:

    Very funny but quite useless ( Useless is a bad word for an open
source API, I know... :-p)
    As we say in french: "Inutile donc indispensable"

    Picture: http://img.skitch.com/20100806-erydjc45rr92jmrpikdic2mukc.jpg

    Informations:

        * Latitude
        * Longitude


    4) GPS Coordinate of a station:

    I use this to create a GPS guidance within my application using
the free GPS software from Google!
    That's a nice feature:

    Informations:

        * Latitude
        * Longitude



    5) The price of a ticket:

    Not implemented yet in my application

    You should do something with this adress (Belgian Only):
http://sefora.b-rail.be/sefora/Sefora/berekenen.do?action=accessTicket&langue=2


    flo wrote:
>     sounds like a promising plan :-)
>     any details?
>



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