BetterTFI

An open-source alternative application to TFI Live, using the people's voice to shape feature set/functionality.

What is BetterTFI ?

BetterTFI is an open source alternative dedicated to meeting the needs of the people of Ireland for an application to navigate public transport. Its main aims, from survey results, is to have minimal and easy to use features that allow the app to be performant when the user needs to navigate public transportation.

The app works by using Flutter, a cross-platform application development framework, PostgreSQL, and Go.

Flutter is an open-source cross-platform development tool being used within this project to create the application itself.

PostgreSQL is an open-source SQL database which is being used to parse GTFS data. The data is quite large (500+ MB CSVs) so a database is required to effectively parse and retrieve data.

Go is a programming language which is being used for the backend component of the application.

The NTA (National Transport Authority) has published their API for GTFSR (General Transit Feed Specification - Realtime) and Vehicles, but is limited to 5,000 requests per day from a default developer API key. Therefore, a custom backend which utilises the 5,000 requests per day will allow the app to still query for data without limits.

All of these components come together to form the app.

Why BetterTFI ?

As is currently stands, there is no open source implementation of a navigation app for Ireland. This means there is a gap in the market to fill, where users or developers may appreciate seeing the source code of an application users may rely on to help them navigate their journey using public transport.

This may be an employee/student who needs to commute, or a casual user wishing to spend the day in a new city. Users who can view the source code of a project can suggest new features or point out bugs that developers failed to catch, or even suggest fixes/new features through a PR.

As an alternative to TFI Live, users can have more choice within the market, and more choice can often lead to better results!

Features

• Real Time Info : Use geo-location or search to find bus stops and their next departures.

• Timetable : Use search to find timetables for the routes you use.

(Screenshots to come later...)

How to work with project

Front-end (Flutter)

Download GTFS Realtime files + extract to /assets/csv

Run these commands to download and extract the necessary files to /assets/csv .

cd assets/csv
curl -O https://www.transportforireland.ie/transitData/Data/GTFS_Realtime.zip
unzip GTFS_Realtime.zip
rm GTFS_Realtime.zip

IMPORTANT : Make sure you define your API endpoints in main.dart before running. Instructions on how to run API can be seen below.

From root directory run flutter pub get followed by flutter run to compile an application in debug mode.

Back-end (go)

APIs can now be launched as containers !

See below for how each API/backend can be launched as a container.

GTFS Realtime API

Ensure you obtain an API key from here and pass as ldflag when running the API.

From backend/gtfsr directory run go run -ldflag "-X main.apiKey=<YOUR_API_KEY>" main.go which will run the API on localhost:8080 .

Alternatively, you can build and run as an image in backend/gtfsr with

podman build -t gtfsr-api .
podman run -d -p 8080:8080 -e apikey=<YOUR_API_KEY> gtfsr-api

which will run the API on localhost:8080 .

CSV API

1. Create and run the docker image from root directory with the following command:

   podman build -t postgres-transit .
   podman run -d \
   --name transit-db \
   -p 5432:5432 \
   -e POSTGRES_USER=admin \
   -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=admin \
   -e POSTGRES_DB=transit \
   postgres-transit

2. From backend/csv directory run go run -ldflags "-X main.dbUser=admin -X main.dbPassword=admin -X main.dbName=transit -X main.ipAddress=<POSTGRES_IP_ADDRESS> -X main.port=5432" main.go which will run the API on localhost:8081 .

3. Alternatively from backend/csv run podman build -t csv-api . then

   podman run -d -p 8081:8081 -e dbUser=admin -e dbPassword=admin -e dbName=transit -e ipAddress=<POSTGRES_IP_ADDRESS> -e port=5432 csv-api

   which will run the API on localhost:8081

Getting Started

This project is a starting point for a Flutter application that follows the simple app state management tutorial.

For help getting started with Flutter development, view the online documentation, which offers tutorials, samples, guidance on mobile development, and a full API reference.

Assets

The assets directory houses images, fonts, and any other files you want to include with your application.

The assets/images directory contains resolution-aware images.

Localization

This project generates localized messages based on arb files found in the lib/src/localization directory.

To support additional languages, please visit the tutorial on Internationalizing Flutter apps.