OFF TOPIC: Metra API?

[Eric Stein]

I know this is off topic, but I'm having no end of trouble trying to
find an equivalent API for Metra. Does such a thing exist? A few
pointers of where to look would be great.

Eric

[TreKing]

There is nothing official, no (that I'm aware of, at least).

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TreKing - Chicago transit tracking app for Android-powered devices

[Randy Baxley]

glad someone is asking anything here,

I found

General Transit Feed Specification: Data

On

http://metrarail.com/metra/en/home/about_metra/obtaining_records_from_metra.html

You might compare it to output transit or transitbot to see if they are using this data or real time data.

On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 9:24 PM, Eric Stein <to...@des.truct.org> wrote:

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[Sean Walcott]

It would be really nice if we could get a group together asking for their API. Has anyone else called them to ask? 

[Eric Stein]

I ended up forking Ian Dees' Python library, scoping out the source of the Metra live train tracker a bit, and doing a lot of poking and prodding to produce this:

https://github.com/eastein/metraapi

Any feedback would be welcome.  I haven't called to ask... I'm not sure where I would even call.

Eric

--

[Eric Stein]

I then wrote webapp that uses my metraapi module to create its own (more reasonable, I think) API, and then a bit of AJAXy frontend stuff to make a tracker that I think's more useful: http://metradata.truct.org/

https://github.com/eastein/metradata is the code for that. I sort of want to make this a publically usable API that does request combining, short caches etc, but I don't have much time to maintain it. It could also use a bit of improvement as it's totally synchronous even though it's running in Tornado (rush job, sue me!). I've been using it most days to go to/from work and it hasn't had too many issues except the little weirdness in the data that Metra sent out that I patched the other day.

There's still some stuff in the AJAX responses (yeah, I'm using the AJAX handlers from their live tracker website.. and another one I found by sneaking around through their URL structures) that Metra sends to me that I don't understand (for instance, what is runstate? I couldn't tell ya).

Eric

[Randy Baxley]

Why not enter an issue.

[Eric Stein]

If you mean to avoid forking Ian's library - I intended to file a pull request with my improvements on github. He initially replied, but he seems to have lost interest either in the API overall or in my improvements - so for now, I continue to go it alone on my repo.

If you meant something else, I don't understand.

Eric

[Randy Baxley]

Just that an issue might raise Ian's interest and others.  No judgement here.  Also no expert on raising interest even though my own is focused on how to get the open community behind the ideals if not the substance of:

https://github.com/randy7771026/Visual-CTA-Chicago/blob/master/README.md