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Sean Barbeau edited this page Mar 27, 2017 · 23 revisions

Table of Contents

## 1. Introduction This application can be used to validate [General Transit Feed Specification Real Time (GTFS-rt)](https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs-realtime/) feeds. GTFS-rt is a real-time complement to the original [GTFS format](https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/), used to present transit route, schedule, and stop data. GTFS-rt data changes many times within a minute, while GTFS data only changes a few times a year.

Please note that this project is still under development and will not fully perform the intended task of monitoring a GTFS-Realtime feed and logging the errors.

### 1.1 What is the GTFS-RT format From the [developer site for GTFS-RT](https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs-realtime/), "GTFS-realtime is a feed specification that allows public transportation agencies to provide realtime updates about their fleet to application developers. It is an extension to GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification), an open data format for public transportation schedules and associated geographic information. GTFS-realtime was designed around ease of implementation, good GTFS interoperability and a focus on passenger information."

These feeds are now becoming an industrial standard for real-time transit data.

### 1.2 Need for a validator GTFS and GTFS-realtime have become dominant formats for open data in the transit industry. While the GTFS format has a GTFS Feed Validator, no such open-source tool currently exists for GTFS-rt. ### 1.3 Roadmap

There is a roadmap for the project.

## 2. Technical Overview This project will implement a tool that takes a GTFS and GTFS-rt feed as input, and examines the GTFS-rt feed to determine if it properly meets GTFS-rt best practices, both those explicitly listed in the spec and those based on the needs of consuming applications. ### 2.1 Building the project

To build the project, please see the main project README.

### 2.2 Sequence Diagram ![GTFS-Realtime Validator sequence diagram](http://i.imgur.com/1YgAf8E.png) ### 2.3 API This project has a [RESTful API](https://github.com/CUTR-at-USF/gtfs-realtime-validator/wiki/RESTful-API) that is used to start and monitor feeds. ### 2.4 Rules

This project uses rules to validate feeds:

  1. List of Validation Rules
  2. Rules and Test Cases
### 2.5 Sample Feeds

Here are some sample feeds you can use to test the current validation tool: