Getting train times for my local dashboard
Recently I decided I wanted to make a dashboard using Node JS that would provide quick information that I look for regularly. These might be;
- Share prices I'm interested in
- Latest football scores and upcoming matches for my football team (Burton Albion)
- A sub section of my twitter feed
What I definitely wanted was to be able to click onto my dashboard and quickly find out the next trains I can get back to Winchester as I've been commuting to and from London recently and leave for home at differing times. There can occasionally be delays and I'd like to see if there's any delays so I can leave early or later to avoid a rush.
So where to look? The obvious place to try was a quick google of network rail api's which took me to: http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/46391.aspx
The three API options were:
Online Journey Planner - This deals more with planning routes, calculating ticket prices etc. Which since I follow the same route everyday and buy a daily travel card, it doesn't really fit my need.
Knowledgebase - This provides information on engineer disruption, station data such as facilities and service disruption. Whilst the latter is helpful the others were less so, as my stations are always the same and I would be aware of engineer work on the journey to London.
Darwin - In its own words "GB rail industry’s official train running information engine, providing real-time arrival and departure predictions, platform numbers, delay estimates, schedule changes and cancellations." which fits my requirements perfectly!
To use the Darwin SOAP API's you need an authentication token which you get by registering here:
This limits you to 5000 requests / hour which is around 5 million over 28 days. This cap can be removed by contacting infoservices@nationalrail.co.uk though it's extremely unlikely I will hit that!
You can find all the documentation for the API's here:
*NOTE*: You must follow the brand guidelines if you are using the APIs attributing the data to network rail. Brand Guidelines & Logos
So how did I use it?
Great Question!
Now I've not used SOAP much so did the obvious thing and imported the supplied WSDL (v2017-02-02) (https://lite.realtime.nationalrail.co.uk/OpenLDBWS/wsdl.aspx?ver=2017-02-02) into SOAPUI (v5.3.0).
This gave me all the services I can use as well as example XML formats for input to a REST API.
This gives me the HTTP address to make the calls to, the valid XML the service requires and lets me test with the data I will be using.
<typ:TokenValue> : This is supplied by Network Rail after registration and is required
<ldb:numRows> : This denotes the number of responses to return.
<ldb:crs> : The first of these which is required states the departure station, in my case Waterloo
or WAT in network rail world. Full list: http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations_destinations/default.aspx
: The second is used for destination station and more can be added for other
destination.
<ldb:timeOffset> : This is how much after the current time you want the search to look for.
<ldb:timeWindow> : Denotes amount of time to get results for
The output is also very straight forward based on SOAP UI:
Making the request in Node JS
In our node JS application we can achieve the equivalent of this call by using the "request" node module: https://www.npmjs.com/package/request
var request = require("request");
var postOptions = {url: 'https://lite.realtime.nationalrail.co.uk/OpenLDBWS/ldb10.asmx',headers: {'Content-Type': 'text/xml'},body: data/waterlooToWinchester.xml,method: 'POST'};request(postOptions, function cb(err, res, body) {if(err) {console.error(err);} else {
console.log(body);
}
Where "data/waterlooToWinchester.xml" is the same XML shown in the SOAPUI request example.
This outputs:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"><soap:Body><GetDepBoardWithDetailsResponse xmlns="http://thalesgroup.com/RTTI/2017-02-02/ldb/"><GetStationBoardResult xmlns:lt6="http://thalesgroup.com/RTTI/2017-02-02/ldb/types" xmlns:lt="http://thalesgroup.com/RTTI/2012-01-13/ldb/types" xmlns:lt4="http://thalesgroup.com/RTTI/2015-11-27/ldb/types" xmlns:lt5="http://thalesgroup.com/RTTI/2016-02-16/ldb/types" xmlns:lt2="http://thalesgroup.com/RTTI/2014-02-20/ldb/types" xmlns:lt3="http://thalesgroup.com/RTTI/2015-05-14/ldb/types"><lt4:generatedAt>2017-09-19T22:44:55.6600574+01:00</lt4:generatedAt><lt4:locationName>London Waterloo</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>WAT</lt4:crs><lt4:filterLocationName>Winchester</lt4:filterLocationName><lt4:filtercrs>WIN</lt4:filtercrs><lt4:platformAvailable>true</lt4:platformAvailable><lt6:trainServices><lt6:service><lt4:std>23:05</lt4:std><lt4:etd>On time</lt4:etd><lt4:operator>South Western Railway</lt4:operator><lt4:operatorCode>SW</lt4:operatorCode><lt4:serviceType>train</lt4:serviceType><lt4:length>5</lt4:length><lt4:serviceID>0rdRe8ywmDifl5VO1N1Q4Q==</lt4:serviceID><lt5:rsid>SW927700</lt5:rsid><lt5:origin><lt4:location><lt4:locationName>London Waterloo</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>WAT</lt4:crs></lt4:location></lt5:origin><lt5:destination><lt4:location><lt4:locationName>Poole</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>POO</lt4:crs></lt4:location></lt5:destination><lt6:subsequentCallingPoints><lt6:callingPointList><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Woking</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>WOK</lt4:crs><lt4:st>23:31</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Basingstoke</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>BSK</lt4:crs><lt4:st>23:51</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Micheldever</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>MIC</lt4:crs><lt4:st>00:03</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Winchester</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>WIN</lt4:crs><lt4:st>00:11</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Eastleigh</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>ESL</lt4:crs><lt4:st>00:22</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Southampton Airport Parkway</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>SOA</lt4:crs><lt4:st>00:27</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>St Denys</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>SDN</lt4:crs><lt4:st>00:32</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Southampton Central</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>SOU</lt4:crs><lt4:st>00:37</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Totton</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>TTN</lt4:crs><lt4:st>00:43</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Brockenhurst</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>BCU</lt4:crs><lt4:st>00:54</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>New Milton</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>NWM</lt4:crs><lt4:st>01:02</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Christchurch</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>CHR</lt4:crs><lt4:st>01:09</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Pokesdown</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>POK</lt4:crs><lt4:st>01:13</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Bournemouth</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>BMH</lt4:crs><lt4:st>01:17</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Branksome</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>BSM</lt4:crs><lt4:st>01:23</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Parkstone (Dorset)</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>PKS</lt4:crs><lt4:st>01:26</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint><lt4:callingPoint><lt4:locationName>Poole</lt4:locationName><lt4:crs>POO</lt4:crs><lt4:st>01:30</lt4:st><lt4:et>On time</lt4:et><lt4:length>5</lt4:length></lt4:callingPoint></lt6:callingPointList></lt6:subsequentCallingPoints></lt6:service></lt6:trainServices></GetStationBoardResult></GetDepBoardWithDetailsResponse></soap:Body></soap:Envelope>
This isn't much good to me at least, as I prefer to use JSON to access the data at the web client side. To do this there is a neat little node module called "xml2js": https://www.npmjs.com/package/xml2js
The below snippet parses the xml string and removes the prefixes from the xml tags to make it more readable and accessible as JSON.
var parseString = require('xml2js').parseString;
var stripPrefix = require('xml2js').processors.stripPrefix;
parseString(body, { tagNameProcessors: [stripPrefix] }, function (err, result) {
if(err){
console.log(err);
}else{
var currentJourney = result.Envelope.Body[0].GetDepBoardWithDetailsResponse[0].GetStationBoardResult[0].trainServices[0].service[0];
var train = {
"trainTime": currentJourney.std[0],
"status": currentJourney.etd[0],
"departingFrom": currentJourney.origin[0].location[0].locationName[0],
"goingTo": currentJourney.destination[0].location[0].locationName[0]
};
}, function afterJourneysProcessed(err) {
if(err) {
console.log(err);
}else{
return(train);
}
});
At the client side we can handle this "train" variable by parsing the JSON and then setting the html based on the JSON input.
dashboard.html
<p id="nexttrains1"></p>
dashboard.js
var example = JSON.parse(this.responseText);
//train 1
var trainOutput1 = example[0].departingFrom + " to " + example[0].goingTo + "<br>";
trainOutput1 = trainOutput1 + "<b>Departing at:</b> " + example[0].trainTime + " <b>Current Status:</b> " + example[0].status;
document.getElementById("nexttrains1").innerHTML = trainOutput1;
This returns a single train journey. In my own code I also included an array called "calling points" and returned five journeys. This is quite a bit more code and a little too much for a single blog (since I've already added a lot already) but I can pass it over on request. Email me if you'd like to see the full code with promises and client to server code!
What does it look like?
Anything you would do differently?
Any questions?
Feel free to email or comment and I'll gladly get back to you!
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