gtfs-validator

A GTFS Schedule (static) General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) feed validator

Introduction

This command-line tool written in Java that performs the following steps:

1. Loads input GTFS zip file from a URL or disk
2. Checks files integrity, numeric type parsing and ranges as well as string format according to the GTFS Schedule specification
3. Performs basic GTFS business rule validation
4. Performs advanced GTFS business rule validation (work-in-progress)

Usage

via GitHub Actions - run the validator on any gtfs archive available on a public url

TLDR;

Fork this repository, open a PR on master within it, edit the file .github/workflows/end_to_end.yml following instructions on lines 5, 43-45 and push on your PR branch. Name your branch from the agency/authority/publisher of the feed you are testing. You should now see the workflow End to end / run-on-data start automatically in your PR checks, running the validator on the dataset you just added. The validation report is collected as a run artifact in the Actions tab of your fork repository on GitHub.

If the workflow run crashes or something doesn't look right in the validation report json file, please see the Contribute section, we may be able to help!

longer version - step by step through GitHub web UI (screenshots coming soon)

1. go to https://github.com/MobilityData/gtfs-validator

2. click on the fork button on the top right corner

3. wait for the fork creation, you should now see your fork (https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/gtfs-validator)

4. navigate to .github/workflows/end_to_end.yml

5. click the crayon icon to enter edit mode

6. on line 5, replace transport-agency-name by something significant like societe-de-transport-de-montreal if you were adding a dataset from STM

7. keep it around as you'll need it in step 15.

8. uncomment line 43 by removing the # character

9. on line 43, replace ACRONYM by some acronym for the Agency/publisher, in our example that would be STM

10. uncomment line 44 by removing the # character

11. on line 44, replace [[[ACRONYM]]] in [[[ACRONYM]]].zip by what you put down in step 12 - NO SPACES OR SPECIAL CHARACTERS -- keep the .zip extension intact

12. on line 44, replace DATASET_PUBLIC_URL by a public url pointing to a GTFS Schedule zip archive

13. clic on the green Start commit button on the right of the page

14. select the option Create a new branch for this commit and start a pull request.

15. replace the proposed default branch name by what you got from step 7. Note that the branch name must exactly match the line 5 text (e.g., societe-de-transport-de-montreal).

16. click the green Propose changes button

17. on the next screen, click Create pull request

You should now see the workflow End to end / run-on-data start automatically in your PR checks, running the validator on the dataset you just added. The validation report is collected as a run artifact in the Actions tab of your fork repository on GitHub.

If the workflow run crashes or something doesn't look right in the validation report json file, please see the Contribute section, we may be able to help!

via Docker image

Prerequisites

1. Install Docker
2. Retrieve an image from our package page. For snapshot versions of the master branch

docker pull ghcr.io/mobilitydata/gtfs-validator:master

• we also provide images of our tagged versions starting with v1.3.0

3. Run the image either in the Docker Dashboard UI (dont forget to bind port 8090) or via this command

docker run -p 8090:8090 ghcr.io/mobilitydata/gtfs-validator:[[[REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_TAG]]]

By default, you will then have access to the web version of the validator at http://localhost:8090/ See Web app usage

If you want to use the cli version within Docker, you must first stop the web app with the following command

TODO: Could not figure out command.

Note: if you don't do it, the cli app will compete for resources within the container

After attaching a terminal to the running container, navigate to the cli jar folder

cd /usr/gtfs-validator/cli-app

you can then follow the instructions of the next sections

Note: As a convenience, a shell script file is provided in the same directory. It is copied in the Docker image from end_to_end.sh It can be used to run the validator in an automated way via Java on your local computer as described in the next section. Only community based support is provided for local runs of the validator.

via Java on your local computer

Prerequisites

1. Install Java 11 or higher
2. Download the latest gtfs-validator JAR (cli or web) file from our Releases page or snapshot artifact from GitHub Actions or Circle-CI Pipelines

cli-app usage

Validate a locally stored GTFS dataset

Sample usage:

java -jar gtfs-validator-v1.3.0_cli.jar -i relative/path/to/zipped_dataset -o relative/output/path -e relative/extraction/path -x enumeration_of_files_to_exclude_from_validation_process

...which will:

1. Search for a zipped GTFS dataset located at relative/path/to/zipped_dataset
2. Extract the zip content to a directory located at relative/extraction/path
3. Validate the GTFS data and output the results to the directory located at relative/output/path. Validation results are exported to JSON by default. The validation process will not be executed on the enumeration of files provided via option -x and the files that rely on them.
4. Validate the GTFS data and output the results to the directory named output_folder. This folder will contain a single .json file with information related to the validation process.
5. The generated .json file will be beautified if option -b or --beautify has been provided and set to true. Note that if this argument is not specified, the validator will by default generate a beautified version of the validation report.

Note:

• export validation report as .json file: After validating MBTA's GTFS archive on 2020-10-20 at 09:07:48 (America/Montreal timezone), the validation report will be named as follows MBTA__2020-10-20_09/07/48.442365.json
• export validation report as .pb file: after validating MBTA's GTFS archive on 2020-10-20 at 09:07:48 (America/Montreal timezone), the validation reports will be named as follows
  • MBTA__2020-10-20_09/07/48.442365-1.pb
  • MBTA__2020-10-20_09/07/48.442365-2.pb
  • ...
  • MBTA__2020-10-20_09/07/48.442365-n.pb

Those names come from concatenating the information found in feed_info.feed_publisher_name and the local time of execution separated with __ then replacing whitespace character by _

In the case where GTFS filefeed_info.txt is not provided, the validation report name would be limited to: __2020-10-20_09/07/48.442365.json or __2020-10-20_09/07/48.442365-1.pb

Example: Validate GTFS dataset while specifying extraction, input, and output directories

java -jar gtfs-validator-v1.3.0_cli.jar -i gtfs-dataset.zip -o output_folder -e extraction_folder

In order, this command line will:

1. Search for a zipped GTFS dataset name gtfs-dataset.zip located in the working directory
2. Extract its content to a directory named extraction_folder
3. Validate the GTFS data and output the results to the directory named output_folder. This folder will contain a single .json file with information related to the validation process.
4. The generated .json file will be beautified if option -b or --beautify has been provided and set to true. Note that if this argument is not specified, the validator will by default generate a beautified version of the validation report.

Example: Validate a subset of a GTFS dataset.

java -jar gtfs-validator-v1.3.0_cli.jar -i gtfs-dataset.zip  -x fare_attributes.txt,attributions.txt

In order, this command line will:

1. Search for a zipped GTFS dataset name gtfs-dataset.zip located in the working directory
2. Create a directory named input
3. Extract the content of gtfs-dataset.zip to the directory created at step 2
4. Create a directory names output
5. Exclude files fare_attributes.txt and attributions.txt from the validation process. But also the files that rely on them: translations.txt and fare_rules.txt
6. Validate the GTFS data and output the results to the directory created at step 4. This folder will contain a single .json file with information related to the validation process.

Validate a GTFS dataset stored on a remote server

Sample usage:

java -jar gtfs-validator-v1.3.0_cli.jar -u url/to/dataset -o relative/output/path -e relative/extraction/path -i input.zip

...which will:

1. Download the GTFS feed at the URL url/to/dataset and name it input.zip
2. Extract the input.zip content to the directory located at relative/extraction/path
3. Validate the GTFS data and output the results to the directory located at relative/output/path. Validation results are exported to JSON by default.

Example: Validate a GTFS dataset and export the validation result as proto files

java -jar gtfs-validator-v1.3.0_cli.jar -u url/to/dataset -o output_folder -e extraction_folder -i local-dataset.zip -p

In order, this command line will:

1. Download the GTFS feed at the URL url/to/dataset and name it local-dataset.zip
2. Extract the local-dataset.zip content to the directory extraction_folder
3. Validate the GTFS data and output the results to the directory output_folder. As option -p is provided, results will be exported as .pb files

Example: Validate a GTFS dataset without specifying command arguments or providing configuration file

java -jar gtfs-validator-v1.3.0_cli.jar

In order, this command line will:

1. Search for a zipped folder in the working directory
2. Extract by default the content of the zipped GTFS dataset to directory gtfs-validator/input/
3. Validate the GTFS data and output the results to directory gtfs-validator/output. Validation results will be exported to JSON by default.

For a list of all available commands, use --help:

java -jar gtfs-validator-v1.3.0_cli.jar --help

Software configuration

Execution parameters are configurable through command-line or via a configuration file execution-parameters.json. By default, if no command-line is provided the validation process will look for execution parameters in user configurable configuration file execution-parameters.json. In the case said file could not be found or is incomplete, default values will be used.

One should note that if both command-line options and configuration file are provided, the configuration file takes precedence over the command option.

Sample usage:

The two following sample usages are equivalent, provided that execution-parameters.json file is located in the working directory:

java -jar gtfs-validator-v1.3.0_cli.jar -e relative/extraction/path -o relative/output/path -i relative/path/to/zipped_dataset -x agency.txt,routes.txt

{
  "extract": "relative/extraction/path",
  "output": "relative/output/path",
  "input": "relative/path/to/zipped_dataset",
  "exclude": "agency.txt,routes.txt"
}

Note that you'll need to change the above JAR file name to whatever release version you download.

web-app usage

A second implementation of gtfs-validator uses SpringBoot framework and a user interface (based on React).

Run the application via Java on your local computer

java -jar gtfs-validator-v1.3.0_web.war 

Which will:

1. Launch server side of application on port 8090
2. Launch client side of the application on port 8090

Open your favorite browser and go to http://localhost:8090 the user interface of the application should be displayed as follows: The entire valdiation process can be monitored in the Terminal:

1. Drag and drop your configuration in the area indicated for this purpose
2. Click on validate

The validation report will be generated and saved at the default location or the path specified via the configuration file's output field. The validation report can be displayed by a simple click on the Display validation report button, which will automatically open your default text editor with the content of the validation report. See configuration section for more details regarding software configuration.

Run the web-app in development mode

$ yarn start

This command runs the app in the development mode. Note that this command should be ran in /application/web-app/react-client/ Open http://localhost:3000 to view it in your browser.

The development page will reload if you edit the React project.

You will also be able to see any lint errors in the console.

You can refer to this documentation for more information regarding the React implementation of the web-app.

Architecture

We use clean architecture principles to implement this validator, which modularizes the project.

Some important modules:

• domain - Entity classes
• use cases - Business logic
• adapter - Convertors (e.g., parsers and exporters)
• application/cli-app - The main command-line application
• application/web-app/react-client - The local web ui as a React project
• application/web-app/spring-server - The implementation of the application that relies on SpringBoot framework

Run Tests locally

Unitary

To run tests:

1. Run Java tests

$ ./gradlew check

1. Run JS tests

$ cd react-client/
$ npm test

End to end

via run-on-data GitHub workflow job

There is a way to locally execute the run-on-data job of the end_to_end GitHub workflow

You need Docker to be installed

Install act

brew install act

In the repo root folder

act -j run-on-data

Note: we run into a know issue of act when trying to collect artifacts

[End to end/run-on-data]   ❗  ::error::Unable to get ACTIONS_RUNTIME_TOKEN env variable

.zip dataset files and .json validation report files still are available **within the Docker image (docker exec -it) ** for manual collection

MacBook-Pro-de-Fabrice:~ fabricev$ docker exec -it b22cf048e47ad10c65be3071dd14dad999dbcf59531a2e31326733c05d861048 /bin/sh; exit
# ls
ADDING_NEW_RULES.md  build.gradle		      mst.zip
Dockerfile	     config			      null
LICENSE		     domain			      octa.zip
MTBA.zip	     gradle			      one_empty_gtfs_file.zip
README.md	     gradlew			      output
RELEASE.md	     gradlew.bat		      settings.gradle
RULES.md	     input			      usecase
adapter		     mbta.zip
application	     mixed_empty_full_gtfs_files.zip
# cd output
# ls
MBTA__2020-10-26_08-51-29.211229.json
MST__2020-10-26_08-51-39.835092.json
Orange_County_Transportation_Authority__2020-10-26_08-52-19.024739.json

License

Code licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.

Contribute

If you have followed instructions in the Usage via GitHub Actions and have a fork with an open PR on your master branch, you've already done most of the work! Complete the following instructions to send us all the relevant information so we can diagnose and fix the issue.

1. go to https://github.com/MobilityData/gtfs-validator
2. select the Pull requests tab
3. click the green New pull request button
4. in the Compare changes section, click the blue link compare across forks.
5. on the left side of the ← base repository: should be MobilityData/gtfs-validator and base: be master
6. on the right side of the ← use the first dropdown to change head repository: to your forked one (like ilovetramways/gtfs-validator for GitHub handle ilovetramways)
7. on the right side of the ← use the second dropdown to change compare: to the branch in your fork containing the changes you made to end_to_end.yml that led to an issue
8. click the green Create pull request button
9. use the dropdown on the green Create pull request button to select Create draft pull request
10. click the green Draft pull request button

Then we're all set, thk you very very much! The end to end workflow will run on the newly created PR in our repository and automatically collect all relevant information. We take care of everything from then and will follow up directly in the PR.

While we welcome all contributions, our members and sponsors see their PRs and issues prioritized.