Notices

One of my first apps for N900. Seems to do what I want, and maybe it's of some use to someone else:

tflapp (get it off extras-devel)

EDIT 21/06/10: Added mobility options configuration screen as requested by djonma



The first button shows you the status of the London tube network:

(press/hold for additional info)


The second button gives you a tube map. Both these features are probably better done by other available applications (travelapp and mwtube spring to mind)

Typing your postcode and clicking the "Take me Home" button, fires off a cellID based position request, feeds that into http://www.uk-postcodes.com/ to get a postcode (because I don't know how to provide lat/long as a start point to tfl).
then using that as the start point (and the previously entered postcode as the destination) it takes you to the tfl journeyplanner page
EDIT: you should be able to enter a Point of Interest or an address as a destination too. I "try" to be clever, but this may fail

To change route options click on "Change Journey Options"

This dialog allows you to change some route parameters, either on a per use basis, or (by hitting save defaults) permanently

TIps:
After typing your postcode in the main screen, if you hit the "return" key, the postcode is saved (saves you from typing it again the next time you load the app).-- a "get me to this postcode from whereever I am; as long as it's all in london"

Which brings me onto the fact that the Tfl Journey planner is London only. But hopefully of some use to people who visit london regularly and can use it to find their way back to Euston or some other station to return home.
EDIT: If the current location or destination is outside London (but in England) it redirects to google transit. Not ideal as google transit in the UK does not account for trains, but it's a start

Note that current position may be quite a bit off, considering I'm using CellID and then the postcode geolocation engine. But it seems to be good enough for my needs

There are probably a LOT of lurking bugs (first app, give me a break ). If someone wants to take this and rewrite it/make it better/more efficient/anything else feel free

TODO:
Screenscrape the tfl website to present the same data better

PS: The code is a bit of a mess, and I use a hodge-podge of dbus, python, pyqt, gobjects, etc -- basically anything to get the job done. There is still a lot I don't understand, and a lot I have to learn -- but for v0.1, it kindof works
A lot of thanks to the wiki and tmo in general. A lot of good information here!
PPS: Yes, it's a stupid name, but I can't figure out how to change the name once it's uploaded to the repos. Maybe I'll rename it to T-Flapp or something to get around any copyright concerns

EDIT: And thanks (a LOT) to mikec and fatalsaint for their python and QT in 30mins post

Hiya, does this use the full tfl journey planner and so do buses and c limit walk amounts?
I'm a wheelchair user and the majority of the tube is inaccessible to me. I have to visit London once a year minimum for specialist medical consultant appt, but something like this would be very handy and maybe help me get over my fear of travelling around London, and be able to visit friends there more often.

Hi Djonma,

It redirects you to the full journeyplanner page -- currently it just automates filling in the destination and current location (which is sometimes hard, as you don't always know where you are in a big city ) and lets the tfl page do the rest

Unfortunately it currently does not allow you to customise the travel options (eg, the mobility requirements) -- but you can hit the "edit search options" link once the page has loaded. (Not ideal as I find it annoying to have to hit those checkboxes everytime -- but it does work)

I should be able to change this to allow users the option of customising the search requirements (once I figure out the tfl URL format )

Hi there. Its great to see someone working on a tfl app. I wish I could be of assistance with development! Are you planning to develop it further? The take me home feature is really clever and its nice having all these features in one app. Would be great to have results displayed in the app and some custmisation options for later builds.

Keep up the good work

Thanks stayola,

I do plan to continue to work on it, and the app should eventually display the results without a redirect to the tfl site (hopefully it'll be a lot quicker than waiting for the browser -- well, I find it a bit painful anyway)
mysociety have a perl based tfl scraper that I may be able to learn from and modify to my needs. If anyone knows of any other way to get this information, I'd be grateful.

As for customisation options, I've found some into on the URL format here: http://wiki.opentfl.co.uk/TRIP_REQUEST2 -- so that "should" be straightforward too (and useful to have)

On the TODO list is to also fire off requests to Traveline when you're outside london. This is made extra annoying by the fact that the travelline websites all handle only certain sections of the country and don't handle journeying from one section to another.
So, for the time being, if the start or end is outside london, tflapp fires off a redirect to google transit (well, outside london, but in England as google transit does not cover all of the UK) -- annoyingly, google transit in the UK does not do trains. So the results are currently pretty rubbish there too!

Just remember that this is all very new to me (I'm not really an "app developer" either) and could hence take some time to get working...

Hi djonma,

You should now be able to configure the journeyplanner to only find mobility restricted routes. Just check off the options you need from the Journey Options page and hit the "save defaults" button. It "should" work (and you can easily check as the journeyplanner results page shows any active restrictions)
I've also given some additional options to restrict mode of transport (bus, tube, train, etc) for the search.

Hope that helps.
Next up, screen-scraping (but this may take a while

Hi thegman,

any update on this application ? I just got outdone badly by an iPhone user, who managed to 'prove' their apps were better by showing me (and the girl I was showing my N900 to) a very nice detailed status of the stations along the tube lines, due to the strike.

I know you were planning to do this screen scraping (probably to get indeed more info out) due to the lacking of a proper URL based API.

Any luck/progress there ?

Thanks.

Sorry netweaver,
Been caught up by real life a bit ...it's still on my TODO list, but I must admit I haven't really added much new functionality in the last few months.

I'll try to take another look soon...

sw184hl... garrat lane, no?

ive been usingb this app for a while was reat but since updating to pr1.3 it has stopped working click on to open and it immediate shuts down. love to havde thnis app back what can i do?