sydney-bus-departures

A simple API for realtime Sydney bus departures

The Transport for NSW Open Data initiative is awesome, but I wanted a more lightweight API.

Very early stage and may change! Please email me if you find this useful so I can let you know of changes.

You can find stop IDs on Google Maps or the TfNSW Trip Planner.

Usage

GET /v1/summary

If you want a super simple way to get realtime data for one or more routes from a given stop.

Example

UNSW to Museum Station
https://sydney-bus-departures.herokuapp.com/v1/summary?stop=203220&routes=394,396,399&num=3

Response
394/396/399: 3m,[20m],35m

Spec

https://sydney-bus-departures.herokuapp.com/v1/summary?stop=STOP&routes=ROUTES&num=NUM

Query string

• STOP: the 6 digit stop code to query
• ROUTES: comma separated list of bus routes to query (eg 396,394)
• NUM: number of results to return

Response

• Results are realtime by default, square brackets indicate scheduled departure, rather than realtime
• Results are the soonest departures for all given bus routes
• The upstream API only provides minutes and no seconds, so treat responses with ± 30 seconds accuracy

GET /v1/departures

All the best data for your desired stop!

Example

https://sydney-bus-departures.herokuapp.com/v1/departures?stop=203220

Response:
[
  {
    "realtimeEnabled":true,
    "departureTimePlanned":"2017-07-16T12:30:00Z",
    "departureTimeEstimated":"2017-07-16T12:29:00Z",
    "number":"394",
    "destination":"CITY Circular Quay"
  },
  {
    "departureTimePlanned":"2017-07-16T12:39:00Z",
    "number":"396",
    "destination":"CITY Circular Quay"
  },
  {
    "departureTimePlanned":"2017-07-16T12:44:00Z",
    "number":"393",
    "destination":"Railway Square"
  },
...
]

Spec

https://sydney-bus-departures.herokuapp.com/v1/departures?stop=STOP

Query string

• STOP: the 6 digit stop code to query

Response

• Times are in GMT
• The upstream API only provides minutes and no seconds, so treat responses with ± 30 seconds accuracy
• There is no output about bus capacity yet, but I'm looking into implementing it

Development

Written in ES6 JavaScript running behind an Express webserver. The API key is pulled from the $TFNSW_KEY bash environment variable.

To get an api key you will need to create an account at opendata.transport.nsw.gov.au. The Getting Started page is great resource for the TfNSW APIs.

Add export NXTBUS_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY to your .bashrc or .zshrc with you API key, or just run this command each time you open a terminal.

Install Yarn globally for package management:

npm install -g yarn

Install packages:

yarn install

Standard server dev

npm start

Serverless dev

npm run serverless-dev

Deploy

Serverless

serverless deploy

Example URLS

Summary (plain text):
http://localhost:3000/v1/summary?stop=203220&routes=394,396,399

Departures (JSON):
http://localhost:3000/v1/departures?stop=203220

Testing

Run ./test.sh to run a basic curl to see the output. More sustantial tests will follow.

Pebble app

I also built a basic Pebble app which uses this data, see my pebble-sydney-bus-departures repo for details.

Handy links

Transport for NSW Documentation

opendata.transport.nsw.gov.au/dataset/trip-planner-apis

Online JSON viewer

For large JSON responses when dealing with the original API
jsonviewer.stack.hu/

Author

Jake Coppinger
jakecoppinger.com
jake@jakecoppinger.com