Placr News

A couple of days ago TfL released timetable data via the LondonDataStore. We’ve been taking a look inside these XML files, and we’ve developed a little tool for browsing the data objects:

Browse the TfL Timetable TransXchange Objects

It’s a relatively raw object view (so not very recognisable as a timetable) We created this as an early experiment, and tool to help make sense of the data. Doubtless there are other developers investigating the format, so we thought we’d share it.

We have a ruby script to parse the XML from TfL and generate this HTML interface. This TransXchange static browser generator is also available for you to download and run on your local copy of the TfL XML, and to modify/extend/redistribute as you please. We’ll be aiming to make some improvements in the coming days.

TransXchange

The released XML data (in a zipped up set of 786 files, totalling 1.3 GB) is using the TransXchange format. Several object types can be seen. Here is a sketch of some of these types and relationships (elements nested or cross-referenced by id within the file). We also show some fields of particular interest (many simplifying omissions)

But if you’re looking for a more rigorous definition of TransXchange, the TransXchange website has all the documentation. It also has XSD files, and other tools for working with the data. The key document to have a look at is TransXChangeSchemaGuide-2.4b-v-50.pdf which includes “Figure 3-1 UML Overview of TransXChange Model for a StandardService“, on page 34, a diagram somewhat resembling the above. Page 33 gives a written summary of the object types.

Hopefully this basic information, and the browser tool will serve as a useful starting point for developers looking to understand the data format.