Access to live bus and river bus arrivals API (stream)

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1

Hi all,

I’ve been trying to figure out how to access the Live bus and river bus arrivals API stream: http://countdown.api.tfl.gov.uk/interfaces/ura/stream_V1

It says a username and password will be sent but I have not received anything (and there’s not much documentation about it available from what I can find).

I’d like to know where all vehicles are in real-time for my app. Does anyone know how I can get access to this stream?

Thanks,
Nathan

2

Welcome to the forum, @nathanodong

Just pop and email to [email protected] asking for access to the Live Stream, with a subject like " TfL Bus Stream API for the XXX Services for XXX".

I think a human sent me back some credeintials within about four hours.

3

Here’s my PHP class showing how you access the live stream, once you have some credentials. It’s a bit picky!

 namespace a1z\mtrCrossrail\services\tflDigest;
 class digestCommon
{
const DEBUGMODE = false;
const LINEID = "UL16,UL51,90";
public $isAlreadyRunning = null;
public function setAlreadyRunning($isAlreadyRunning)
{
    $this->isAlreadyRunning = $isAlreadyRunning;
}

public function startDigest($strURL = "http://countdown.api.tfl.gov.uk/interfaces/ura/stream_V1",
                            $strUsername = "LiveBusXXXXX",
                            $strPassword = "password-goes-here",
                            $arrPostParameters = ["LineID" => self::LINEID,
                                "ReturnList" => "StopCode2,StopPointIndicator,DestinationName,EstimatedTime,ExpireTime,VehicleID,StopID"], $intAuth = CURLAUTH_DIGEST, $strFunctionName = "on_curl_write")
{
    if (self::DEBUGMODE) {
        error_reporting(E_ALL);
        ini_set('display_errors', '1');
    }
    if (is_array($arrPostParameters)) {
        $arrPostParameters = http_build_query($arrPostParameters);
    }
    echo PHP_EOL . __FUNCTION__ . " is sending " . strlen(var_export($arrPostParameters, true)) . " bytes to {$strURL}";
    echo PHP_EOL . PHP_EOL . PHP_EOL;
    $arrOptions = [CURLOPT_URL => $strURL,
        CURLOPT_HEADER => false,
        CURLOPT_VERBOSE => self::DEBUGMODE,
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => $strFunctionName !== "",
        CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
        CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => substr($strURL, 0, 5) === "https",    // for https
        CURLOPT_USERPWD => $strUsername . ":" . $strPassword,
        CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH => $intAuth,
        CURLOPT_POST => true,
        CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $arrPostParameters];
    if ($strFunctionName != "") {
        $arrOptions = $arrOptions + [CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION => array($this, $strFunctionName)];
    }
    $resCurlHandle = curl_init();
    curl_setopt_array($resCurlHandle, $arrOptions);
    try {
        $RawResponce = curl_exec($resCurlHandle);
        // validate CURL status
        if (curl_errno($resCurlHandle)) {
            throw new \Exception(curl_error($resCurlHandle), 500);
        }
        // validate HTTP status code (user/strPassword credential issues)
        $intStatusCode = curl_getinfo($resCurlHandle, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
        if ($intStatusCode != 200) {
            throw new \Exception("Response with Status Code [" . $intStatusCode . "].", 500);
        }
    } catch (\Exception $ex) {
        if ($resCurlHandle != null) {
            curl_close($resCurlHandle);
        }
        throw new \Exception($ex);
    }
    if ($resCurlHandle !== null) curl_close($resCurlHandle);
    return $RawResponce;
    }
}
4

Hi @briantist,

Thanks for the reply.

I’ve noticed that there are multiple Unified API endpoints: api.tfl.gov.uk & push-api.tfl.gov.uk

There is only information about the former in the developer portal. Is there any documentation on the latter? I’m wondering if I can use this for what I need instead.

Also, do you know if there is any documentation on the Live bus and river bus arrivals API stream as I can’t find any.

Thanks!

5

There’s also http://cloud.tfl.gov.uk/TrackerNet/ which isn’t in the docs either. As a general rule, use the unified API address provided unless it says otherwise!

6

Hmm… TrackerNet doesn’t look to be what I need for my bus tracking application.

Is there some other kind of way to retrieve the location of all vehicles in service with one API call maybe? I know of this /Vehicle/{ids}/Arrivals endpoint but this would require a request for each vehicle (then further filtering to pick-up the latest ETA which could be quite timely) so I’d rather not go down this route unless I have to. I’d also need to know the vehicle ID ahead of time which would make it difficult to pick up vehicles that are not known to the system.

7

I’ve done this before by making a call to http://data.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/syndication/feeds/bus-sequences.csv to get all the bus route IDs, and then using that to call http://countdown.api.tfl.gov.uk/interfaces/ura/stream_V1

If you don’t want to call for live updates, don’t use Digest mode, the call will return the bus positions as a CSV and then exit.

You can cache bus-sequences.csv as it doesn’t change very often (weekly, perhaps).

8

This might be something I can work with. I’m still waiting on credentials for access to the stream. Is there a way I can make the same call to the Instant call? (http://countdown.api.tfl.gov.uk/interfaces/ura/instant_V1)

I’m not sure what parameters to put into the HTTP request for this as there’s no documentation to help.

9

As per the example…

“LineID” => “UL16,UL51,90”,
“ReturnList” => “StopCode2,StopPointIndicator,DestinationName,EstimatedTime,ExpireTime,VehicleID,StopID”

10

Thanks! This really help me out!

Do you know of any other fields for the ‘ReturnList’ parameter?

11

This might help:

Simon

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