Darwin push port station message URLs

[Evelyn Snow]

I've noticed an issue with incident URLs in station messages coming
out of the Darwin push port, it's also present on the NRE site. As far as I can
tell it's been the case for several weeks, possibly longer. I've reported it to
NRE, who state it's a known issue.

So, to briefly describe the issue - in a station message, you'll often get a
URL wrapped in an a tag, something like
http://nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/311536.aspx, usually a hyperlink
on the text "Latest Travel News".

In this case, if you request this URL, what'll happen is:
http://nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/311536.aspx
301 to http://www.nationalrail.co.uk
301 to https://www.nationalrail.co.uk

The final redirected URL will load just fine of course, but it's not a redirect
to the incident information, just to the main page.

The correct URL for this incident is in fact actually at
https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/311536.aspx

On the face of it, this looks like a side effect of emphasising HTTPS more
heavily on the NRE website, probably URLs coming through the push port will
eventually be fixed. In the meantime, if you're using the feed and using
station messages, I'd suggest considering replacing http://nationalrail.co.uk
with https://www.nationalrail.co.uk in link hrefs in incoming station messages.

Evelyn

[Jeskynar]

Coincidentally (?) I was trying to investigate exactly the same problem, with exactly the same incident number, at the same time as you!

But my reason was a Travel Alert email from National Rail.

Their email contained:

> More details of this disruption can be found here: http://nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/311536.aspx

which fails on two points:

1) It uses http instead of https

2) It omits the www. prefix, without which the connection hangs and times out

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[Jon Cox]

Thanks for pointing that out Evelyn!

In fixing it for my app, I noticed another malformed link that can come through.

For departures from London Waterloo (WAT) in the Darwin Live Departure Boards web service, the following links are supplied for two station messages:

http://nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/311275.aspx

//callcentre.nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/311577.aspx

So in addition to handling this correction:

http://nationalrail.co.uk -> https://www.nationalrail.co.uk

You'll probably also want to handle this correction:

//callcentre.nationalrail.co.uk -> https://www.nationalrail.co.uk

Jon

[Matthew Y]

This also explains why these incidents can't be view from the National Rail app or website either (and haven't been able to for probably a month) as it just takes you to the main homepage.

Someone's made those changes and not thought of the consequence!

The suggestions regarding the https:// and www. mean the link works when I copy it.

[Evelyn Snow]

Hello everyone,

This issue appears to be resolved, URLs I'm getting through the push port are
now pointing to the correct place.

Evelyn

2022-11-24T17:59:17+0000 Evelyn Snow <eve...@evelyn.moe>:

[Matthew Y]

Hi Evelyn,

Does it still look good today? I'm not recording these from Darwin, but I checked the National Rail site yesterday and they seemed to be working however this morning they aren't working again.

See London Euston this morning.

[Evelyn Snow]

Hi Matthew,

Yep, this was based on a quick look at a few URLs, it looks like most (but not
all) URLs were correct on the 13th, and over the last two days the ratio has
got progressively worse, I can't see any of them that are correct today.

The station messages are going into a rabbitmq stream which retains them for
two days, I may (or may not) take a closer look at some point, though any
numbers will be a bit off, I'm still working on addressing frame dropping
issues.

I may have been a tad too optimistic here, oops.

Evelyn

2022-12-15T01:12:36-0800 Matthew Y <wiggyd...@gmail.com>:

> openraildata-talk/9ed71349-8e2c-4356-b763-2aa937a1b801n%40googlegroups.com.