Project iRail: providing public transport information
This is a modal window.
The media could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported.
Formal Metadata
| Title |
| |
| Alternative Title |
| |
| Title of Series | ||
| Number of Parts | 64 | |
| Author | ||
| License | CC Attribution 2.0 Belgium: You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor. | |
| Identifiers | 10.5446/45931 (DOI) | |
| Publisher | ||
| Release Date | ||
| Language |
Content Metadata
| Subject Area | ||
| Genre | ||
| Abstract |
|
FOSDEM 201118 / 64
3
7
10
11
17
19
21
28
33
34
35
37
40
44
48
49
52
55
57
59
62
63
64
00:00
InformationTwitterIdentity managementMoment (mathematics)InformationCartesian coordinate systemWave packetTransportation theory (mathematics)SmartphonePhysical systemWorkstation <Musikinstrument>Mobile appComputer animationXMLLecture/Conference
01:21
Software developerOpen setDirected graphChi-squared distributionRevision controlExecution unitWorkstation <Musikinstrument>InformationWrapper (data mining)Interface (computing)Multiplication signWave packetCodeUser interfaceAxiom of choiceScheduling (computing)InformationMobile appWebsiteParameter (computer programming)Office suiteBus (computing)AuthorizationWorkstation <Musikinstrument>Revision controlGUI widgetSoftware developerSource codeConnected spaceElectronic mailing listServer (computing)Moment (mathematics)TwitterSound effectCircleCodeComputer animation
05:20
Right angleComputer animationLecture/Conference
05:34
Identical particlesTwitterElectronic mailing listParameter (computer programming)Type theoryOnline helpInflection pointAndroid (robot)Mobile WebMobile appInformationTrailFlow separationWindowParameter (computer programming)Revision controlLatent heatGUI widgetHacker (term)Android (robot)Functional (mathematics)Data storage deviceGroup actionSelf-organizationComputing platformIntrusion detection systemCartesian coordinate systemPhysical systemMobile appMessage passingTraffic reportingTwitterPoint (geometry)Software bugSoftware developerWorkstation <Musikinstrument>Computer fileEmailUniform resource locatorComputer animationLecture/Conference
09:18
Point (geometry)IP address2 (number)Moment (mathematics)Internet service providerView (database)TouchscreenSinc functionDatabaseMobile appWave packetSoftware developerCore dumpRight anglePhysical lawScheduling (computing)Addressing modeRevision controlForm (programming)Computer animationLecture/Conference
13:25
XML
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:07
My co-part, you can follow me on Twitter or on identical at Peter co-part So first of all, I'm very happy to speak for an international audience because Yeah, this thing is quite international because if I would go to Italia, I don't know a lot of about Italy
00:29
I would have to find my way through the public transportation system. And so if I would Want to take train and I wouldn't know where to find the right information because probably in the stations everything will be in Italian
00:43
I don't know any Italian. Sorry So I will probably look on my smartphone, but which websites should I check? What is the company that takes care of this information? I don't have a clue So what do I do? I take my smartphone
01:01
I go to my normal application and I try to find the right information But there is no such thing in Europe at this moment Which gives all my information in one place and there is no such thing as an application that combines all the different all the different Companies in one app, so who are we?
01:22
We are just a bunch of people People with commercial interests or people who just want to do this for fun and just like a normal open source community Who wants to take care of this problem? And at this moment, we take care of the NMBS, which is the Belgian rail company
01:41
So we take care of public transport data for developers Yeah, so anyone can use our data which is on a server by API So we had some problems recently
02:02
In September we were doing all this stuff and In July, sorry, or in June even, we got this letter Which said we had to stop immediately with what we were doing Yeah with kind of
02:22
Arguments that that we didn't agree with so there was an attorney, Ewan van den Branden I don't think maybe he is here Over there. Thanks Ewan For sending a letter back. Yeah And Yeah, thanks to him we're still up and running
02:43
And of course, yeah, thanks to Vincent van Kuykenborn, which is a minister here in our in our country Who sent a tweet to put iRail back online and we got a huge light dot effect and all that stuff
03:01
So we're still up and running and this is This simple interface is what we do at this moment and what we have done for two years long This is just a screenshot of iRail.be which you can find all the schedules for
03:22
For the trains in Belgium only the trains at this moment, but we are planning on making this bigger So this website connects through an API Which is this nice XML interface And yeah, you can see various data which we don't show all in the web interface
03:44
but of course there are Other interfaces such as our apps and such as widgets or you can implement something yourself or you can use this on your website to show how How your office deals with transport data and stuff
04:02
So yeah, I won't be the trolls. We also have JSON so for people who don't like XML We have four requests in our API That's stations. That's all the the list of all the stops of a certain public transport company for
04:21
For trains is obviously all the stations for buses. There's all the bus stops and so on We also have connections This is to plan a trip from to a certain place We have live ports. Live ports are stuff that you will see when you enter a station or a bus stop You will see all the time schedules for the next few trains that will leave or depart
04:46
Leave or arrive And we have information about one specific vehicle So you don't have to implement this API yourself Of course we have written a lot of codes ourselves already
05:02
You can reuse that. All the codes we write is under a GPL version 3 license or Maybe some apps are under MIT, but that's the author's choice of course For the lazy people who didn't go to project.iRel.be yet, scan it
05:26
You got it, right? So for the people who want to do a project to this data, we started an NPO. That's a non-profit organization
05:44
And you can reach us in several ways You can use IRC for the diehard hackers who also who always use IRC such as I And you probably There is a mailing list, there is a track, so if you have a problem
06:01
File a bug report We also have Twitter and Identica, so Follow us on Twitter And post a lot of messages in the Identica group If you have bigger projects or ideas, please come to us afterwards. We will answer this
06:20
We will like to answer this and work together Maybe. If you are a public transport company, please come to us. We would very like We would like to work together So what is in the future? We will do a new specification, so we will still keep these four functions, but we will add functionalities
06:46
Such as more request parameters, we will use point-of-interests. That's B.O.I.s Such as I want to visit the Colosseum at Rome. How do I get there from my home?
07:04
More types of transport that we will do And of course more countries. So if you have a country, probably you have a country Please Please, if you want this, come to us and we will work together
07:21
If you're not a public transport company yourself, we can do a scraping thing. There are various ways to solve this problem So with a non-profit organization, we will do our first general meetup, the 14th of February Yeah, we love public transport
07:41
At 2DAP and Tuxi in Brussels, so if you would like to come, you're welcome Yeah, and in that specification, we will We will also take into account the things we learned from API version 1.0 Which are quite a lot of tickets which are still open. If you're such a person who entered the bug report for that
08:06
We will solve that in 2.0 So, examples. We have btrains.com Yeah, I will not show any screenshots of the applications because some people might be offended if I show an iPhone application or if I show
08:21
a Nokia only screenshot, so please for your system just Download it for Android and iPhone. It's in the App Store, so you can Install it very quickly and for Nokia, for the MIMO platform, we have it in nightly So go to that URL and download it, please. For Windows Phone 7, yes, we support that as well
08:47
Samsung Bada and Blackberry Playbook The app btrains is under development. You can help of course at our GitHub account slash IRL We also have widgets which are written entirely in JQuery or in
09:07
JavaScript and These run live. You can go to widgets.irl.be and give you the right information about one certain station So, thanks for listening
09:21
I hope you enjoyed this and I hope some people will come afterwards to me to ask whether Their country can be supported or a certain type of transport can be supported So, if there are any questions, I'd like to take them. I think I have still five minutes left
09:47
The question was can we
10:03
Use this for MIMO 5 or For the older versions. I'm looking to my app developer and he says no only for five Yes Will we be able to download the scheduled data?
10:23
Well for some companies this is a major issue because they don't like to share that data in an open way and Afterwards so that other people can reuse that and maybe they will work with an older dump so with data That's not really up-to-date. So transport companies ask us to
10:43
to not offer data dumps, but for some Companies who will eventually do that if they allow us to do so Yes Can you speak up please
11:01
Interesting Sorry, I didn't get that Sorry, I really didn't get that cross techniques that the providers used to stop me from screen scraping
11:25
So the question was Do providers try to to stop us and the answer is yes, well we had this Decease-and-desist letter, but from technical points we have never received any obstruction like that, so
11:42
We can run that with trying other IPs and stuff if they would do that, but at this moment we We don't like to be seen as an illegal project we are Really just some awesome people who try to be awesome for everyone even the transport companies
12:11
Yes, that's a very good question, what's the license of the data that we already have At this moment we only have the data of the Belgian train company
12:22
But the Belgian bus company the Flemish bus company as we are talking with and we are talking with The Brussels Bus company The the data of the the Belgian railway Company is really normal and in our point of view. It's free to use
12:45
you can use that without any any license since there's I'm sure Ewan who's very close to you will give a very Yeah of the right yeah in front of you will give a very
13:00
Very broad and broad answer to that But we generally say we there are no copyrights on the on the data Because of the second database law you can look that up if you if you want or ask Ewan about that Okay, thank you very much, thank you very much Peter
Recommendations
Series of 36 media
Series of 39 media