gptt

gptt (Get Public Transport Timetables) is a command line tool to download and format public transport timetables from the Google Directions API for a given day between an origin and a destination using the Transit travel mode.

Installation

The best way to install gptt is via pip: pip install gptt. You can alternatively install it from the source: python setup.py install.

Usage

Command line

gptt is primarily intended to be used as a command line tool, although its functions can be used in a Python program (see below). Using the default template, it generates detailed timetables like this one:

gptt -f "Budapest, Kelenföld vasútállomás" -t "Hejce" -d "2020-07-01" -k $GOOGLE_API_KEY -o timetable.html, for example, downloads all public transport connections between Budapest, Kelenföld vasútállomás (a train station in Budapest, Hungary) and Hejce (a village in Hungary) for the date July 1, 2020 using the Google Maps API key defined in the environment variable $GOOGLE_API_KEY, then format this data using the default HTML template and output it to timetable.html.

Note: the default HTML template is designed to be used for routes between, not within municipalities (it emphasizes the locality more than the actual stop name), however, you can create custom templates to suit your specific needs.

Full description of command line options:

Note: options in bold must be passed either as command line arguments or in the config file.

Using a config file

The following config.json adds values for the non-required options and the API key. (DO NOT commit your API key to a version control system!).

{
  "vehicle-type-names": ["HEAVY_RAIL=Ⓣ","BUS=Ⓑ"],
  "station-name-replacements": ["Hauptbahnhof=hbf.", "Bahnhof=bf."],
  "lang": "en-GB",
  "max-transfers": 3,
  "api-key": "ab4ab2fa-74c9-4af1-a250-9efe735c80fb"
}

Using this file, we can run gptt -f "London" -t "Manchester" -d "2020-08-19" -c config.json.

Python package

The two main functions, get_transit_plan_for_timestamp() and get_transit_plans_for_day() can be accessed by

from gptt import timetables
timetables.get_transit_plan_for_timestamp(...)
timetables.get_transit_plans_for_day(...)

Detailed documentation of these functions can be found in the code.

Contributing

Issue submissions and pull requests are welcome. Simple fixes do not require an issue to be submitted, however, do submit one if your pull request includes a lot of changes or new features.

More info

Read more about this project on my blog.

Changelog

• 0.1.1:
  • [bugfix] Fixed a bug when certain localities were not parsed correctly from API response (#1)
  • [bugfix] Made the program aware of the local time of the origin of the query to define the day (#2)
  • [bugfix] (partial): Better handling of the Routing API not returning transit results. This is not entirely resolved (#3)
• 0.1.0:
  • initial public release