bcferries 0.0.6

BC Ferries Python Library

This is the Python client library for interacting with information published on the BC Ferries mobile site. It is essentially a wrapper around a BeautifulSoup-powered scraper. Better documentation and tests are still in the works; feel free to contribute!

Installation

pip install bcferries

Usage

from bcferries import BCFerries

bc = BCFerries()
terminals = bc.terminals()
# {u'Horseshoe Bay': BCFerriesTerminal (Horseshoe Bay), u'Tsawwassen': BCFerriesTerminal (Tsawwassen)}
t = terminals['Tsawwassen']
# BCFerriesTerminal (Tsawwassen)

routes = t.routes()
# {u'Tsawwassen to Duke Point': BCFerriesRoute (Tsawwassen to Duke Point)}
r = routes['Tsawwassen to Duke Point']
# BCFerriesRoute (Tsawwassen to Duke Point)

crossing = r.crossings()['10:45pm']
# BCFerriesCrossing (Tsawwassen to Duke Point at 5:45pm)
crossing.capacity
# BCFerriesCapacity (18% Full)

All returned dictionaries have fuzzy string matching on they keys.

routes['Tsawwassen to Duke Point'] == routes['Tsaw to DP']
# True

There is also fuzzy time matching on keys that represent a nearby time.

r = routes['HBay to DBay']
schedule = r.schedule()
schedule['6:12 PM']
# BCFerriesScheduledCrossing (Queen of Cowichan at 6:30 PM)

bcferries caches the last 128 API calls by default. You can change this to any integer you want, or set it to zero to disable caching.

import bcferries.api

bcferries.api.BCFerriesAPI.cache_last = 16

You can also pass any function the ignore_cache keyword argument to bypass the cache, or call the flush_cache method on BCFerries to clear the entire cache.

terminals = bc.terminals() # initial call takes multiple seconds
terminals = bc.terminals() # repeated call returns almost instantly
terminals = bc.terminals(ignore_cache=True) # takes multiple seconds to return

bc.flush_cache() # wipes the cache

You can export any subset of information with a call to to_dict on any object. You can also use to_fuzzy_dict and to_json as needed. To export all available information, call any of these methods on a BCFerries instance, and be prepared to wait a while.

crossing.capacity
# BCFerriesCapacity (18% Full)
crossing.capacity.to_dict()
# {'passenger_filled': 32, 'mixed_filled': 4, 'name': '18% Full', 'filled': 18}