Re: [MTAdev] Service status down

[Robby O'Connor]

See the archives...MTA knows... Look at this thread:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!searchin/mtadeveloperresources/missing$20servicestatus.txt$20feed/mtadeveloperresources/XtI-_1XiHbo/tb-rltaFDuEJ
<https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#%21searchin/mtadeveloperresources/missing$20servicestatus.txt$20feed/mtadeveloperresources/XtI-_1XiHbo/tb-rltaFDuEJ>

On 11/2/2012 10:15 AM, Jan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> http://mta.info/status/serviceStatus.txt seems to have been down for
> the past few days.

[Nabil Mouzannar]

How are the guys at "Embark NYC" able to display the statuses?

Sent from my IPhone

[Jeremy Baron]

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 6:51 PM, Nabil Mouzannar <nabb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> How are the guys at "Embark NYC" able to display the statuses?

Please be a *little* patient. (i.e. don't blindly repost the same
question to multiple threads on the same list in quick succession and
without mentioning that you're double asking)

See my response on the other thread.

-Jeremy

[Nabil Mouzannar]

Sure!
Sorry...I thought I sent it to the wrong thread, so I have resent it
Thanks
Nabil

Sent from my IPhone

[Aaron Donovan]

To everyone who has been asking about the Service Status feed in this thread and the others:

Data feeds will resume once we revert back to our normal web site.  That could be this week or, depending on how the coming Nor'easter treats us, it could be longer.  Regardless, once we're back the data feeds originating from the LIRR, MNRR and HQ will be live, but anything originating from our servers downtown may be problematic until the data center is back.  Our offices at 2 Broadway were flooded by the storm surge.

Thank you for bearing with us.  Apologies for the lack of communication.

-Aaron

[Scott]

Can you at least post an empty XML file at that url with the status field as 'STATUS UNAVAILABLE'?  I keep getting emails from users of my app saying every train says null.

[Nabil Mouzannar]

Great Idea! Yes please that would be very helpful.

Thank you
Nabil

[Scott]

I understand that there's ongoing problems related to the hurricane.  But the lack of communication and no interim solution is very problematic for an organization trying to encourage developers to make apps that 'improve the transit experience' (MTA AppQuest slogan)

[Ethan Arutunian]

We are happy to host a temporary Live feed if the MTA can re-direct to our URL...

-ethan

[Will]

We have received a lot of negative feedback from our users on this issue. A redirect to ethan's hosted feed would be very useful as an interim solution. 

Aaron- is there anything we can do to stop this from happening in the future? Perhaps it can be hosted on a different domain so it is not taken down when the MTA website goes into disaster mode.

Cheers,

Will

[Adam Ernst]

As an app developer who has developed apps for several agencies, let me say: never have your app hit the agency's web server directly. Have it hit your server, which then checks the agency's server, so it this happens, you can just swap it out manually and return what your users need. Much more robust!

[Albert Rosa]

I agree with Adam, having a failsafe in your own application should allow you to provide proper feed back to the user outside of just a service unavailable.

Myself, I used what was displayed in the MTA widget either with the widget itself or by scraping the widget to allow for the same user experience.

sent from my mobile thoughts.

[Nabil Mouzannar]

You're are right guys!

I will def. do this in my next version!

What do you think of this solution? I see that the mta.info is working can someone that the MTA copy the text file with "Service Unavailable" message to this location:

/status/serviceStatus.txt 

Thanks,

Nabil

[Albert Rosa]

I don't believe that will be ideal either, you and the MTA will be providing false information to their users if this is done. Services have been restored and systems are running as their widget states, doing so will just cause more frustration for people who are consuming the serviceStatus.txt and for the end users. There have been other threads suggesting scraping this widget and I believe there may have been some code shared to do so. Please if you have the time do search other threads with this similar topic for that solution. 

Overall I suggest to take the time to update you app to next version other than passing the buck over to the MTA, personally, i'm working on a sub system of my own just incase the widget goes down and there are alerts or messages of some kind due to unforeseen zombie Apocalypse.

--

Albert Rosa

(Phone) 646-389-ROSA

rosa...@gmail.com | http://www.albert-rosa.com | http://blog.albert-rosa.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/albertrosa | LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/albertrosa

[Aaron Donovan]

Hi everyone,

The MTA's full website was restored as of midnight. You should find the Service Status and other feeds restored as well.  There may still be some hiccups and/or glitches, especially with the feeds that are served out of 2 Broadway, which was flooded.

[Michael Mann]

Thanks Aaron

Looks good!!!

--
Thanks

[Nabil Mouzannar]

Thank you so much!!

Sent from my IPhone

[tea]

Aaron

Thanks for the update.  The LIRR feed seems be as of Nov 6, it does not fully match the current latest schedule.  Any chance that a new feed that reflect the latest schedule will be out soon?

Thanks.

[John Paul N.]

Thank you, Aaron, for everything you and the MTA have done. All the live feeds that I use (service status, elevator/escalator, Bus Time) appear to be working properly.

Now that Web service has been thankfully restored, I hope that we will be kept abreast of how the MTA would handle another server failure. I don't want to rehash the complaints of the past two weeks, but I would like to repeat Scott's quote:

But the lack of communication and no interim solution is very problematic for an organization trying to encourage developers to make apps that 'improve the transit experience' (MTA AppQuest slogan).

The MTA should take steps to ensure this does not happen again. It is not the app devs who are affected most by this web service outage, it's the users of the apps. I continue to believe that the MTA is acting in good faith with app devs, and I don't want to find a reason to believe otherwise.

Finally, I just want to mention the replacement of advertising with service status: http://www.mta.info/news/stories/?story=868 I support what the MTA is doing in this regard, prioritizing service information over advertising revenue during major service changes. Does this mean CBS Outdoor doesn't use ServiceStatus.txt?