Pull search information with POST and json data

[nalvarez508]

Included in a (future) commit are a headers file and resulting search results json data (stored in session storage). At the very least, the data could be parsed quicker than checking each browser element could.

[nalvarez508]

Tested with curl -i -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d <somedata> https://www.amtrak.com/v4/journey-solution-option may have to try with cookies or through a browser.
One thought is to get cookies from a chromedriver session and pass this in the post request
This returned the default "couldn't process your request" error from amtrak's site, same as when using an unmodified webdriver

[nalvarez508]

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46361494/how-to-get-the-localstorage-with-python-and-selenium-webdriver

[nalvarez508]

Parsing session storage worked. Each train is stored in the following path:

journeySolutionOption : dict
  journeyLegs : list (of one dict)
    journeyLegOptions : list (of all results as dict)
      % data stored in here as a mix of list of lists and dicts

This not only makes parsing a page faster as we just need session storage, but it also reveals a lot of hidden data such as fare types and train information for multiple segments, seating accommodations, etc. Would need a deep dive.

[nalvarez508]

Useful keys from session storage.
searchresults is the meat of what we're after
stationsData_stations returns a list of every location served by amtrak, train or bus
traincodes returns every train by number. Train website is /firstword-secondword-train.
The latter two can be retrieved just by going to amtrak.com

[nalvarez508]

After closer examination:

• traincodes is useful, but for what, I am not sure in this application
• stationsData_stations is great and well formatted but includes bus stops which seems out of scope at this point. However I would not be opposed to including this feature later, perhaps as an "Include Bus Stops" option.
• searchresults I really want to work but it still requires that we use a search, and with a webdriver, what's the point

[nalvarez508]

JSON data only