pyxontime 0.3

Python software to get OXONTIME's bus schedules of Oxfordshire

As part of my new courses of “Paradigms of Programming” in Oxford Brookes University, I’ve to develop 7 different programs in 7 different languages. Two of them will be larger programs (but not too large ;) and the five others will be smaller, more or less.

Time will tell if the five small programs will be small enough for me to finish them before the end of the semester :)

PyxonTime project

So PyxonTime is one a the 2 big programs :

• Py for Python

• xonTime for OXONTIME, a Real-Time Information website for Oxfordshire’s bus users

Python is one of the languages I’ve chosen to learn during this module. I started PyxonTime as well as Python three days ago and the main part is finished. PyxonTime retrieve bus stop codes and names from the http://www.oxontime.com website. Because Oxontime doesn’t have, yet, and public API, I decided to parse the website using the excellent PyQuery library. As a result, you can search for a bus stop ot name, and then view the schedule times of the bus stop you’ve chosen. Finaly, you can save this bus stop so you’ll not have to search for it again, and access the stored bus stops in a menu, no view the schedules. Data are saved in a sqlite database.

Next

Many other functionality are available only at http://www.oxontime.com, search as geographic or search by name of bus service/line. Maybe later I’ll add that to PyxonTime !

The two main areas of evolutions are :

• The OXONTIME functionalities

• Improve the GTK+ GUI so that it can be more user friendly, maybe the most important: substitute the need of copy+past bus codes or names by button switching from one view to another

Enjoy ;)