10 July 2014

Galway Bus RTPI API

The rtpi.ie website has access to real-time data for the Galway Bus Éireann transit system. Unfortunately, this data is not officially accessible to developers, and is in a weird, proprietary, JSON-ish format. The aim of this project is to provide a simple API to access this data, returning it in a valid JSON format. It was also a good excuse to finally learn how to use node.js :)

A couple of notes/caveats:

• Google Maps provides this info already, but it doesn't seem to be available in the Directions API right now. - In theory, the code could be modified to service the entire country. I'm not sure of the extent of the RTPI, but it seems to cover commuter services, in addition to the city/town services.

Live demo available at https://galwaybus.herokuapp.com

Source code available on Github. Please feel free to send pull requests!

Usage -----

Routes

• GET /routes.json

Lists all the available bus routes in the Galway transit system. This list is hard-coded and would need to be updated manually, should the routes ever change.

• GET /routes/<timetable_id>.json

Returns a list of stops on a given route. Use the timetable_id retrieved from the routes.json API. In the reponse, the stops key will contain all stops, separated into two arrays — the separate arrays represent the opposite directions taken by the bus on the route.

Stops

• GET /stops.json

Lists all the available bus stops in the Galway transit system.

• GET /routes/<stop_ref>.json

Returns a list of departure times for a given bus stop. Use the stop_ref retrieved from the stops.json API.

Schedules

• GET /schedules.json

Lists all the available bus routes in the Galway transit system, including links to their PDF timetables on the Bus Éireann website. This list is hard-coded and would need to be updated manually, should the routes ever change.