Next Departure data feeds - broken

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Our "Next Departure" data feeds on the top of these pages are not working / intermittent issues with the old "Tiger" which has been expected at some time.   We "piggy back" on systems ... and when the piggy fails or is replaced, we need to find a new mount.

I am watch watching what's happening ... unsure whether this is work worth doing as other more modern stuff is now available.  Poll to ask members.

[grahame]

Poll closed yesterday. In answer to "would you use these feeds if I brought them back" you voted (on a low turnout for our polls)

Yes - often   - 0 (0%)
Yes - occasionally   - 5 (29.4%)
Don't know   - 1 (5.9%)
No   - 9 (52.9%)
I don't know about these feeds   - 2 (11.8%)

The feeds at present are working intermittently - sometimes correct, other times giving results many hours old, at other times giving no trains or a program error message on a condition I have not allowed for in the feed.

Since I wrote the code that "scrapes" Tiger, alternative systems have come along and to some extent my work has been supplanted by more modern stuff.   In view of the low turnout of voters, the only users being some occasional ones, and the significant programming effort to get an alternative in place - potentially one with a limited life - I am proposing to replace the links with links to "next train to" boards which are the next generation of data from the rail industry.

Swindon IS working at present - here is what is shows


proposal is to switch to something like this:


Different in what it says and in many ways more useful (as well as less useful in other ways)

Comment / additional feedback welcome ...

[Richard Fairhurst]

I've had the same problem with the departure board at the top of charlbury.info which is now stuck on 06.11! It used to consume the TIGER XML feed which has now died.

If it's helpful, I spent most of Saturday morning figuring out the NRE^▸ (National Rail Enquiries)/Darwin interface to Live Departure Boards. You have to sign up for a token but that's pretty easy. The hard work is that it uses SOAP, which was outdated last time I used it in 2005. There are various Python examples on the web but I wanted to do it in Ruby. Eventually I came up with this:

https://github.com/systemed/live_departures_ruby

I haven't wired it up to the charlbury.info site yet but that's the easy bit... figuring out SOAP authentication was the hard bit!

[grahame]

I've had the same problem with the departure board at the top of charlbury.info which is now stuck on 06.11! It used to consume the TIGER XML feed which has now died.

If it's helpful, I spent most of Saturday morning figuring out the NRE^▸ (National Rail Enquiries)/Darwin interface to Live Departure Boards. You have to sign up for a token but that's pretty easy. The hard work is that it uses SOAP, which was outdated last time I used it in 2005. There are various Python examples on the web but I wanted to do it in Ruby. Eventually I came up with this:

https://github.com/systemed/live_departures_ruby

I haven't wired it up to the charlbury.info site yet but that's the easy bit... figuring out SOAP authentication was the hard bit!

Thanks for that ... I'll take a look based on that guidance.  Not straight away - still on my way home and that's a story to write in the morning.  Love Bath Bus Station !!!

[grahame]

The feeds at present are working intermittently - sometimes correct, other times giving results many hours old, at other times giving no trains or a program error message on a condition I have not allowed for in the feed.

Since I wrote the code that "scrapes" Tiger, alternative systems have come along and to some extent my work has been supplanted by more modern stuff.  ...

Belately, largely done - try clicking on the "Next Departure" links and you should see the appropriate (full detail) customer information screen.