iRail news
- Been playing around with nginx vs Apache for iRail. The bottle neck still is the NMBS site (and I’m truly sorry for DoSing you, dearest NMBS. I had to benchmark), but nginx seems to win just slightly over Apache. Maybe it’s worth moving irail.be to my nginx webserver. <3 nginx.
- The iRail (national) mobile website is getting its final touches and should go live tomorrow night.
- The iRail API seems stable. Special thanks to Pieter.
- iRail is currently developing a native Qt (Symbian, Maemo and MeeGo) application.
- There will most likely be a Bada (Samsung) native application as well.
- Same for the iPhone, native app should be here soonish.
- If you’d like to help, one way or another, two addresses, Project iRail and mailing list. 🙂
- iRail team will attend Apps Marathon on Monday.
- iRail @ OpenBelgium
iRail meet-up: Report
Ironically we started a little later as planned due to unforeseen traffic-jams for Yeri and Christophe. Nevertheless we did a great job and I want to start off by thanking all the participants and of course the hackerspace of Ghent.
From left to right: @Waza_Be, @pietercolpaert, @louisdedecker, @tuinslak, Arno, @maleadt, @coreation, @mathiasbaert - Missing: @hansbxl, @joristimmerman - Photo by Tuinslak (CC by-nc-sa)
Decided and discussed:
1. What should be in the API
We decided on 4 maincalls to the API (on picture, 4 black arrows to the right):
* Connections
How to get from a station to another with realtime information (delays, platformchanges, …), transits, stops, vehicle numbers, and so on. We also came up with the fact the we might want pricing information included, with a url to buy a ticket online, and whether tickets are still available or not (arrows on the left).
API 1.0 Brainstorm whiteboard at whitespace - Photo by Yeri Tiete (Tuinslak) (CC by-nc-sa)
* Lifeboard
Realtime information about arrival and departure of one specific station. A lifeboard contains the same information that you would see on the displays at a station.
* Stations
A list of all available stations in the API with geocoordinates. We might as well want to give each station a unique id. Someone suggested to use the already existing ID of Open Street Map. Personally I haven’t found any documentation about that yet. If someone can point me to that I would be very glad.
* Vehicle
Information about a specific vehicle. For instance the current geocoordinates of a train or plain, the stops a vehicle usually makes, … The most important thing we decided is the vehicle id. There is no such thing as an international ID that’s unique for 1 specific vehicle. Therefore we’re going to specify our international ID as: “CountryCode.Company.InternalCompanyID”. For instance “Be.NMBS.IC2345” would be a valid ID for a Belgian NMBS intercity train.
2. Date/Time
The whiteboard about timestamps (Photo by Yeri Tiete (Tuinslak) - CC by-nc-sa)
An important discussion was how we will format the time returned for each connection. We found out that programming languages work with: ISO 8601 or with unixtime. So we will provide both in the way provided on the whiteboard.
3. Name of the project
BeTrains is the client of Christophe Versieux (@Waza_Be) and Jan Vansteenlandt (@coreation) for android. They have a lot of users and they started to use iRail as their content provider. BeTrains is a known name for android people.
On the other hand is iRail a well known name for people who are interested in open data. However the i in iRail is a little dangerous for abcdefghi™jklmnopqrstuvwxyz reasons. That’s why we will not name any broader projects after iRail. That being said project.iRail will be our mainplatform to develop. But clients will most preferably be called after BeTrains.
4. User-interfaces
Christophe Versieux on BeTrains (Photo by Pieter Colpaert - CC by-sa)
Christophe Versieux gave a very good presentation about how to write a good user (/mobile) interface. We came up with some guidelines.
5. Legal actions
As usual, we discussed some legal matters as well. We comforted everyone that what we do is in our opinion 100% legal. We will give everyone an update 1 October. We’ll keep you posted.
6. Misc
You can reach our development API over here: http://dev.irail.be/api/connections.php?from=Brugge&to=Brussel &lang=EN
This API version is not a stable version and should not be used for official releases!
If you want to contribute, our developer habitat is still at project.iRail.be.
Follow me on identi.ca – Pieter
P.S. – If you were at the meeting and I forgot to mention something, do not hesitate to contact me. I will include it asap.
iRail meet-up – Friday 17 sept
On Friday the 17th of September we are meeting up with all people interested in open data to specify the iRail API. Whether you’re a graphical artist, a low-level coder, a mobile app developer, openness enthusiast, journalist, etc… you’re more than welcome.
Where?
We will meet up in the hackerspace of Ghent. The address of the location is: Blekerijstraat 75 Gent, room 1.21
If you want to get there by public transport, the best way is to take the train to Gent Dampoort and walk from there (5 minute walk)
At the gate
When you arrive at the location you will find a closed white garage-door. If you’re unlucky and could not make it at 18:00 you can call me on +3248415542nine. We will open the gate again at 19:00, 20:00 and 21:00 or on ping.
Program
– Gate opens each hour
18:15 – Welcome to the event. Explanation about the evening. This is the perfect moment for general questions.
19:15 – discussing the API specification on the whiteboard
20:15 – Talks:
- How will we manage project.iRail.be as an open-source project (Pieter Colpaert)
- Current legal situation (Yeri Tiete – @Tuinslak)
- An example of a good user interface for iRail (Christophe Versieux – BeTrains – @Waza_be)
21:15 – Managed coding
- Explanation on usage of github (Yeri)
- Coding of the API with interested people (Pieter)
- Coding of various clients with interested people (BeTrains with @coreation and @Waza_be, QT trains with Tim Besard, IPhone app with Ben Turner, Mobile site with Yeri…)
22:15 – Picture of all attendees
22:30 – Unmanaged coding
- code whatever you want and stay until you want
- talk to us about your specific ideas
- have a good time
More links
Website of the hackerspace
Official event on project iRail
Follow me on identi.ca – Pieter
iRail hacking event @ Hackerspace Ghent
17 Sept 2010, Ghent.
All information here and here.
Be sure to come and help around! Fun guaranteed! 😉