Transport for Greater Manchester: Unofficial Rubygem

This is a Rubygem which acts as a wrapper for the Transport for Greater Manchester REST API. This provides the most accurate car parks, bus and metrolink information available to freely consume through the opendata.tfgm.com REST API.

We built this to use internally in our project, EventRoute, for the Innovation Challenge in Manchester (which won Best Under 21). The TFGM REST API is new and unstable as of March 2013 so we would avoid using it in production.

• Sign up for an API Key — It's easy to sign up at developer.tfgm.com and you'll need a developer & application key. An example of what both the keys should like are: a1b23cd4-ef67-890g-h123-4567i8jk9lmn and they must be 36 characters in length.

• Install the gem

gem install tfgm

• Include it in your Ruby — Insert this at the top of your Ruby code where you'll using TFGM.

require 'tfgm'

• Create an instance of TFGM::API

instance = TFGM::API.new("Developer Key", "Application Key")

• Make it do something — if you're unsure of what it can do, scroll down to "Manual" on this page.

instance.stops_on_route('X50')

• Have fun. — Everything is returned as a Hash.new in Ruby. Use .inspect to extract data you need.

There's very limited data available, but we've outlined what's currently available below. Parameters denoted with * are mandatory.

• Find all car parks in Greater Manchester

# Parameters:
# (int)  *page     = default: 0
# (int)  *per_page = default: 10
instance.carparks(0, 5)

• Find a car park by ID

# Parameters:
# (int) *id
instance.carpark(21915)

• View all bus routes running in Greater Manchester

# Parameters:
# None
instance.routes

• View bus route by ID

# Parameters
# (string) *bus_code
instance.route('X50')

• Verify bus route exists

# Parameters:
# (string) *bus_code
if instance.is_route('X50') then
# Route exists, yay!
end

• Bus stops on bus route

# Parameters
# (string) *bus_code
instance.stops_on_route('X50')

• Find bus stops near a geolocation

# Parameters:
# (double) *latitude
# (double) *longitude
instance.bus_stops_near(52.91391221, -3.39414441)

• Find bus stop by ATCO Code

# Parameters:
# (string) *atco_code
instance.bus_stop('1800SB04781')

• Find routes running from bus stop

# Parameters:
# (string) *atco_code
instance.buses_on_stop('1800SB04781')

• View all journey times

# Parameters:
# None
instance.journey_times

• View journey times for a single route

# Parameters:
# (string) *journey_id
instance.journey_times('A56-Dunham_proxy')

We all know the REST API for TFGM is really buggy, but it's a great start. I'm glad that it's available and can foster innovation in the city, so if you're interested in developing it with me, just play about with it.

Let me know via @bilawalhameed on Twitter if you're interested before sending a pull request.