Announcing New CTA Train Tracker Location Data

[ctaweb]

Hello, developers!

 

Some exciting news: An update to the CTA Train Tracker (SM) APIs and the addition of a new Locations API are coming tomorrow. As promised, we're releasing location data so you can start incorporating latitude, longitude and heading into your projects wherever it might be useful.

 

All existing elements and structures in current XML endpoints are remaining the same. This is merely an addendum to the existing APIs, as well as one new API.

 

Here are the basics: 

• A lat, lon and heading element, each, will begin appearing in the CTA Train Tracker Arrivals API, as part of each "eta" container element in a response for a request for arrivals at a given station.
  
• A single position container element, containing a lat, lon and heading element will be added to the CTA Train Tracker Follow This Train API, in the response for a request for upcoming arrivals by a train's run number.
  
• A new API, the CTA Train Tracker Locations API, will be introduced, which will let you query for a list of trains, along with their location and other identifying bits of info, in service along a given route.

Note that location info is only available for trains that are in-service (i.e., have left a terminal and are not merely listed as schedule-based info), so the new elements are empty when this new info is unavailable.

 

No changes are being made to the API structure, nor with any existing elements.

 

Attached is an advance copy of the updated documentation for the family of CTA Train Tracker APIs, as well as three sample output files you can work with for testing, if you want to start playing with the new data in advance.

 

Let us know if you have any questions. Thanks, and happy coding!

 

 

-ctaweb/TC

 

 

 

 

PS: Based on your feedback, you may be pleased to know we're looking into releasing these APIs in JSON, as well!

[ctaweb]

Just wanted to note that this data is now live!

 

We'll be updating the HTML docs on our site later today.