Madison Transit API

GTFS implementation for a Madison Transit API

This implementation is a replacement to the legacy web scraping solution, and is built on top of the GTFS data feeds from Madison Metro. It's still a bit hacky, however. One of the goals of the projects was to drop in a new, robust solution without changing the API definition. I wanted the implementation to go live without requiring any changes by the various apps.

The app is currently deployed on AWS.

https://api.smsmybus.com

This application provides access to a free, easy to use, JSON-based web service interface for Madison Metro service. Once you've received a developer token, you have access to the following services:

• Real-time arrival estimates for every route at every stop in the city.
• A list of all stops in a specified route
• The geo-location of any stop in the city
• Search for stops near a specified geo-location
• A list of all routes in the system

Running your own instance

Whether you are running locally or inside AWS, there are a handful of steps required to setup your environment.

Setup Node environment

npm install

Load DynamoDB data

These must be loaded on a fresh install as well as every time Madison Metro changes their system and publishes new GTFS files. The goal is to keep the /gtfs directory in sync with Metro.

Detailed notes on GTFS file definitons and instructions for data loads can be found in the README inside of the /gtfs folder.

Scripts are designed to work out of the box with their defaults.

Load Trip GTFS data

npm run trip-import

Load Stop GTFS data

npm run stop-import

Load Route GTFS data

npm run route-import

Setup minimal dev key table

npm run devkey-import

Run server

node app-local.js

By default, the server runs in dev mode and presumes a local instance of Dynamo which you can run in Docker.

If you'd like to point to an AWS instance of Dynamo, you can set NODE_ENV=prod when you start the server, or you can modify the AWS configuration directly in config.js

Deployment

API server is designed to be deployed on Lambda. Use the aws cli to deploy your zip file.

> zip -r function.zip *
> aws lambda update-function-code --function-name <function-name> --zip-file fileb://function.zip

Configuration

The server supports a few different command-line parameters.

• NODE_ENV can be be dev or prod or omitted. Check config.js for value behavior.
• AWS_ACCESS_ID and AWS_ACCESS_SECRET are optional unless your NODE_ENV is prod.
• DEV_KEYS is optional and can be a list of developer keys. It's a simple way to avoid Dynamo lookups for common dev keys. i.e. DEV_KEYS=test,kiosk,george
• LOG_LEVEL can be any level from (pino logging)[https://getpino.io/#/] such as debug, info or error. It's not required. We default to info in prod and debug in dev.