Irail – Yeri Tiete

GTFS

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 18:44:29 +0200

As iRail's servers go down once in a while (and contain some legacy files, making it a bit messy), I decided to back up and host the GTFS feeds of Belgian Railway (NMBS), and the 3 Belgian bus companies (De Lijn, TEC and MIVB) at gtfs.flatturtle.cloud.

Every night, around 3am (CET), the GTFS files are uploaded to Cloudflare R2.

I keep the historical files as well (iRail only did this for NMBS, but I'm doing it for all). The latest available GTFS is in */_latest/.zip.

The directory listing is created using Workers.

I'm trying to get access to dewaterbus.be as well, but so far, they haven't replied.

#iSoc12

Yeri Tiete — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:19:38 +0200

Yay, I can has new srs bznz cards

Yeri Tiete — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 17:11:21 +0200

Thanks Dennis Kestelle and ZwartOpWit for the cheap but quality printing. :)

(The corners are a bit damaged because I had it in my pocket all night yesterday)

I'm sure I have plenty of cards to hand out now. -.-)

i-Vlaanderen - De Vlaamse overheid en open data

Yeri Tiete — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:11:31 +0100

FlatTurtle @ Atlantis

Yeri Tiete — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:22:18 +0100

We’re quite a while later, but this is what it’s starting to look like…

Our 46" Samsung screen with a Genesi’s Efika at our (temporary) o-f-f-f-i-c-e, next to L’Oreal in St. Agatha Berchem.

Still lots and lots to do, but we’re slowly starting to deploy InfoScreens all over Brussels.

Be sure to provide feedback and to connect to the wireless Access Point “FlatTurtle.com” (unless our customer explicitly asked not to provide free WiFi ;)) near every screen.

TEDxUHasselt

Yeri Tiete — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 03:11:07 +0100

Is using my picture.

I like… :D

Screenshot:

BeTrains on a watch

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:58:22 +0100

using a WIMM One

http://storify.com/tuinslak/christophe-launches-betrains-on-a-watch-1

The DataTank

Yeri Tiete — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:12:51 +0100

iRail goes TEDxUHasselt

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 02:17:11 +0100

While I do hate looking at myself and stuff, here it goes:

Presentation on Slideshare.

MIVB/STIB: Let’s move together, from pillar to post

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 06:26:16 +0200

We have made an incredible mistake.

The community of iRail has always been about being open and transparent. The board, Christophe, Yeri and Pieter, have never kept something from the mailing list and never has anything been left undiscussed on one of our meetings. This was true until June and I hope this post will help to understand our conformist actions which we now regret.

Let’s get to the point, right at iRail’s blog.

FlatTurtle is go

Yeri Tiete — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:46:13 +0200

Yay, after many months-o-slack it went finally live a few days ago. The prototype that is.

Soon in every building ! ;)

Thanks to everyone who helped out! :)

AppsForGhent

Yeri Tiete — Fri, 13 May 2011 12:42:42 +0200

AppsForGhent! Tomorrow!

BeLaws.iRail

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 10 May 2011 09:44:25 +0200

See here BeLaws, by Pieter & Tim Esselens, an iRail product.

It’s an alpha version, but should already provide intuitive searching through Belgian laws.

Check it out and gief feedback. ;)

iRail Liveboards

Yeri Tiete — Wed, 04 May 2011 14:57:38 +0200

Bummer! Your browser does not support iframes.

Via iRail Liveboards.

iRail Maps

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 03 May 2011 14:30:00 +0200

Bummer! Your browser does not support iframes.

More at maps.iRail.be.

The Datatank

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 01 May 2011 15:34:42 +0200

Via Pieter Colpaert.

iRail General Meeting 2011

Yeri Tiete — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:00:50 +0100

A reminder;

Tonight is iRail npo’s first General Meeting.

=> At Tour & Taxis - 19h00

All info here and here.

Hope to see you there ! :)

blog.irail.be

Yeri Tiete — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 00:23:21 +0100

… Now has its own host/blog. Riiiiiiiiight here !

iRail matching Google Ads by NMBS

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:48:35 +0200

Gov 2.0 Expo: Unlocking Real-Time Data

Yeri Tiete — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 00:04:52 +0200

Source.

#iRail meeting with #NMBS

Yeri Tiete — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:01:38 +0200

Dear list,

Before we start, this is just a quick summary of what happened today.
This is not an official press release nor a statement, but it's a short
summary made in the evening for the few who are dying to know more:

After listening to Michaël Vanloubbeeck on their Internet strategy, he
asked us straight away what we thought about their mobile web
application. There are three points we thought worth mentioning:

1. The number of clicks before you can see the right data is about 4
times too much. I only want to click once.

2. There is no autocompletion on the station names.

3. There is no button to switch destination and departure station

On top of that we noted that for big phones like most android,
maemo/meego, bada and iphone phones, the site was too small. It was a
great mobile website optimized for small screens and fast connections.
We concluded that they, in comparison to iRail, have a totally different
focus. Both approaches are needed however and we need to cooperate on
this. The NMBS however responded that their mobile website is aimed to
target all phones and anyone, which we can't agree on. Discussion still
open.

The second discussion is one that we started. We are still having
difficulties with Stibbe. Stibbe is a respected law firm in Belgium who
apparently has been hired by the NMBS to try to close us down. They're
quite aggressive in their approach by sending scary letters that our
lawyer (if you read this, thanks for your free support, we appreciate it
a lot!) seems to handle a lot better than we do. They didn't have a clue
about that however. They ensured us however that they will *try* to stop
these actions and let us work as we were doing. So the logical question
for us is: "Can we hereby officially use your data?"; Yet this seemed to
be more complicated as we thought. The real discussion had been started.

The first problem was that for the legal aspect of this we were talking
to the wrong people. Personally we still think we are not doing anything
illegal and not one of their arguments makes that statement fall. As
they are going to stop their lawyers however, we're going to assume that
there is no-one left to sue us and this has encouraged us to crank up
our developing speed. The bad part about this legal story is that they
didn't guarantee us anything and we might get a reply about that matter
in quite some time.

Their second problem was that the Internet and mobile devices are
changing all the time. And there are so many mobile devices they don't
know where to start developing. I didn't really get why they use this
against open data, but I guess it might be that they thought open is
just a fad like myspace which will disappear eventually. So this is
where I protested heavily and said open data would be a very good thing
to do: they would provide a standard API for the data and provide a
standard format. Everyone will be able to make their app for their phone
and their system. For free! Isn't that something you should be happy
with? No they said. They wanted to be able to delete all the
applications that didn't fit their standard. So I started talking about
free market where people who use a bad app will eventually use another
app. Discussion still open.

Some other interesting points:

 * They recognized that they were wrong by using lawyers in the first
place without mailing us. They could have filed a bug-report if
something did not meet their standards (which was a lot back then, we
agreed)

 * They were already planning to provide their own API at *some point in
the future* with a little data in it, to be used under certain
conditions.

 * They are not (yet) convinced open data is the future. "It's not
because we're a public company that our data should be public."

 * Complaints about iRail that reach the nmbs will be, as good as
possible, forwarded to our mailinglist.

 * They think iRail as external API provider is not an option. However,
they did not explicitly ask us to stop (nor did they recommend us to
continue). They'll "quality check" iRail and provide us with feedback
(probably just the mobile site, not our API) 

 * We asked if Nokia could sponsor iRail without being sued by NMBS.
That's a question we expect an answer on in October. They didn't
understand however why Nokia wouldn't come to NMBS for that instead.

 * They have partners with whom they share data. Partners include MIVB,
De Lijn, Google, ...

 * They *promised* they won't block our IP's (that's not something we
should be thankful for in fact. In our opinion it would be illegal for
them to do so) 

I would like to thank the NMBS for inviting us and I hope this will be
one of many meetings. We sure did have a lot of arguments but I think
that's a positive thing. We are not satisfied with the outcome of this
first meeting, but rumour has it that Rome wasn't built in a day as
well.

Afterwards Yeri and I had a very good and inspiring chat. Keep informed
because very soon we will cover you with awesomeness! (we're serious
about this)

Greetings,

Pieter and Yeri
iRail.be

– Posted on the mailing list; Wed Sep 29 01:50:46 CEST 2010.

iRail news

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 03:06:23 +0200

Been playing around with nginx vs Apache for iRail. The bottle neck still is the NMBS site (and I'm truly sorry for DoSing you, dearest NMBS. I had to benchmark), but nginx seems to win just slightly over Apache. Maybe it's worth moving irail.be to my nginx webserver. <3 nginx.
The iRail (national) mobile website is getting its final touches and should go live tomorrow night.
The iRail API seems stable. Special thanks to Pieter.
iRail is currently developing a native Qt (Symbian, Maemo and MeeGo) application.
There will most likely be a Bada (Samsung) native application as well.
Same for the iPhone, native app should be here soonish.
If you'd like to help, one way or another, two addresses, Project iRail and mailing list. :)
iRail team will attend Apps Marathon on Monday.
iRail @ OpenBelgium

iRail presentations #BCA4

Yeri Tiete — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 19:00:16 +0200

BCA4 presentations are online.

Pieter’s:

- html

Yeri’s:

- pdf - slideshare - html - Keynote

iRail hacking event @ Hackerspace Ghent

Yeri Tiete — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 08:34:01 +0200

17 Sept 2010, Ghent.

All information here and here.

Be sure to come and help around ! Fun guaranteed! ;)

iRail @ #BCA4

Yeri Tiete — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 11:25:18 +0200

Both Pieter Colpaert and myself will hold an iRail presentation at Barcamp Antwerp tomorrow.

I’ll be discussing general things about iRail (history, future, vision), and Pieter will discuss everything related to our API.

Presentations will be put online tomorrow evening.

iRail Trac

Yeri Tiete — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 22:57:05 +0200

iRail project page is located at project.irail.be.

Also, biggest issue (station bug) seems to have been fixed in the API (mobile site soon!). Thanks Pieter Colpaert.

iRail updates

Yeri Tiete — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:17:31 +0200

We’ve been busy.

First of all, big thanks for all the code and help from Pieter Colpaert.

Updates:

API (extreme beta), thanks Pieter (wiki),
Code clean up, improvements,
Station bug has not been solved, yet -- working on it, (edit: fixed)
iRail mailing list, for easy communication (wiki / archive).

And again, Git repo located here. Feel free to participate. :)

You can very easily fork my Git repository, all working improvements will be merged to the main stream.

iRail.git

Yeri Tiete — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:25:57 +0200

iRail source is on Github.

To access the iRail source code;

Be aware you need to be added as contributor before being able to commit changes.

get Git
[browse to some folder] mkdir git
cd git
git clone git@github.com:Tuinslak/iRail.git
cd iRail
git fetch

To edit & commit changes:

git add [file]
git commit -m 'edited [file], added this and that'
git push

To update repo

git fetch
git merge origin/master

To check log

git log

Info here and here, oh and here.

Nightly built accessible here. Git gets updated every night around 4h00. (see the index.php; set $dev to 1)

Feel free to commit [working and useful] updates. Decent updates will make the iRail.be website. Contact me if you have any questions or remarks. Most important bug is the station issue and my todo list can be found here.

I’m fairly new to all this Git-stuff, so I might have done some stuff wrong, or not optimised, or whatever. Contact me if so.

iRail station bugs

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:26:35 +0200

Following stations are giving a problem:

Aalst,
Asse,
Brugge,
Mechelen

Trying to find a fix.

Issue: All those stations give an additional intermediate page with the question to confirm your station choice.

Old solution: could be by-passed by adding “[B]” to the end of every station name but this has recently changed and is no longer working.

Current solution: none yet. Working with cURL to check the POST data.

Report additional broken stations to bugs@irail.be please.

iRail is back

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 09:00:13 +0200

After careful consideration with my lawyer Ywein Van den Brande, I have decided to put iRail back online.

The copy of the letter to the NMBS/SNCB can be viewed here.

Minor modifications have been made to make it work correctly again with the new route planner of the NMBS/SNCB (changelog); and I’ll keep working on it to optimise it (next on the todo list is a better results page). Also, feedback is always welcome… But mail me; not the NMBS/SNCB. ;)

Also, dear NMBS/SNCB, please provide us with an API. Clearly, I’m not the only one interested in open data and APIs. This would make small projects like this quite a bit easier and would greatly increase the end quality. Data scraping just doesn’t fit web2.0.

I’d like to gratefully thank everyone for the amazing support, and special thanks go to Ywein Van den Brande, Sébastien Boelpaep and Vincent Van Quickenborne.

Have a nice day,

Yeri Tiete iRail.be

Edit: Due to a bug in the querying, not all station information is displayed correctly and an error page is shown. Working to get it solved.

iRail slashdot effect

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 00:15:18 +0200

Only because stats are pretty awesome. The effects of my media attention a few days ago. I’ll give some more info than what can be seen here.

And pretty happy I set up my nginx caching up a few weeks ago.

MRTG traffic stats on vm1, my nginx caching server, of the first 2 days (only major traffic source is this blog):

Top referrers (though not 100% accurate):

Website hits:

Stopping iRail.be

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:27:21 +0200

As I have no choice.

Geachte,
NMBS heeft onlangs vernomen dat u de uitbater bent van de website www.irail.be.

Uw website is, zoals u het zelf vermeldt, een route planner waarbij alle gegevens en informatie van NMBS website komt (“all data and info is retrieved from the B-Rail website”).

uw website maakt hergebruik van de data van NMBS. Hierdoor schendt u haar intellectuele rechten, zoals haar auteursrecht en databankrecht. Tevens maakt u zich daardoor schuldig aan het strafrechtelijk misdrijf van namaak.

De verklaring inzake het auteursrecht op de website van NMBS (http://www.b-rail.be) bepaalt:

“De site en zijn samenstellende elementen (teksten, lay-out, tekeningen, foto’s, films, grafische voorstellingen en andere elementen die op de site voorkomen) zijn beschermd door intellectuele rechten, net als de logo’s, merken en commerciële benamingen die door de NMBS gebruikt worden.

Daarom verbiedt de NMBS elke bezoeker van haar website om zonder haar voorafgaande expliciete schriftelijke toelating, de teksten, lay-out, tekeningen, foto’s, films, grafische voorstellingen, logo’s, merken, commerciële benamingen, en andere elementen die op de site voorkomen, gedeeltelijk of in een via een elektronische, mechanische of andere procédé bewerkte vorm, te gebruiken, reproduceren, afficheren, publiek te maken, wijzigen, wissen, aan te passen…

Elk inbreuk op wat voorafgaat, leidt tot rechterlijke vervolging, burgerlijke of strafrechtelijke, zonder afbreuk te doen van het recht op schadevergoeding voor de NMBS”.

Wij stellen u hierbij formeel in gebreke voor deze inbreuken en manen wij u aan om die onmiddelijk te staken. Bij gebrek aan staking zal de NMBS zonder verder bericht de nodige juridische stappen ondernemen.

Het voorgaande wordt u gericht onder alle voorbehoud en zonder enige nadelige erkenning.

Hoogachtend,

Xavier Ansseau Eerste adviseur - afdelingschef

Original can be read here and here. Yes, my scanner was on holiday, had to use a camera.

My mail to the NMBS on October 6th 2008. They never replied to that e-mail. Until now, when they got their own mobile website, that is.

Thank you for using iRail all this time.

iRail

Yeri Tiete — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:44:33 +0200

Let me remind you, iRail is NOT affiliated with the NMBS/SNCB in any way.

This website was created during my spare time (and mainly for myself). It is also maintained during my spare time. NMBS/SNCB never helped to create or maintain this website (nor did it show any interest to do so).

I never got paid (or earned any kind of money) for this website. The website is free to access from any device (but it’s built to be used on an iPhone or iPad).

All problems related with this website should be directed to ME and NOT the NMBS/SNCB.

All data and info is retrieved from the B-Rail website. Every request on the iRail website is translated into a request on the B-Rail website. iRail just shows you what the B-Rail route planner would show you without the regular layout (most of the css/html is stripped off). Only the icons have a local backup on the iRail website (technically easier to make sure icons are showed correctly).

I am not responsible for incorrect time tables (and I don’t think B-Rail is either). I am sure there are glitches in the iRail website that might give you false/bugged information (please, report, to me) and some stations might not be working (please, report, to me, as well). In some cases I might be able to fix these issues.

For the REAL NMBS/SNCB Mobile website please visit THIS website.

Again, iRail was only created due to a lack of alternatives (and is still online because some visitors, including myself, seem to prefer my version over the official one), as a hobby and for personal experience.

Please, don’t force me to kill this website.

Edit: read more.

Mobile B-Rail website

Yeri Tiete — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 15:56:37 +0100

Only one and a half year after I launched iRail, the NMBS/SNCB launched their own mobile website (with a few additional functions, but not all of them optimized for mobile view).

Well done I’d say. Just a tiny bit late. :) And too bad there doesn’t seem to be an iPhone optimized version (later?).

Oh well, finally. I’ll be testing it next time I’ll be taking the train. :)

Brussels-Midi + iRail

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:49:17 +0100

Apparently the NMBS/SNCB website now makes a difference between “Brussels-Midi” and “Brussels-Midi Eurostar”; same station, different track.

Due to this change, iRail was no longer able to provide any scheduling information which included Brussels-Midi.

I’ve made a quick and dirty work around (by including “+ Eurostar” in the drop down menu), solving this bug.

However, please, NMBS/SNCB, please please please provide an API or report such changes to web developers.

As it is now, if you manually fill in Brussels-Midi and do not add the Eurostar text, the iRail website will not be able to to look up the requested information.

iRail new year's bug

Yeri Tiete — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:24:12 +0100

Took me a while to notice, but iRail.be was displaying the wrong year by default (2011 instead of 2010) and the NMBS website doesn’t have the 2011 time tables yet. Resulting in errors.

Anyway, fixed!

iRail issues

Yeri Tiete — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:08:09 +0200

Today, I received an e-mail informing iRail was broken, and not showing any information.

The issue has been solved and the site is working again as it should be.

I have no idea for how long the website has been broken, as currently I’m not using any trains to reach my destinations. ;)

Don’t forget to e-mail me if you come across bugs. Much appreciated.

iRail.be

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 16:16:18 +0100

I just noticed, while checking my Google Analytics:

They mention iRail.be on Tijd.be and on L’Echo.be.

Fun !

Railtime

Yeri Tiete — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:49:48 +0100

Finally, NMBS/Infrabel does something customer minded.

Today (after canceling every train passing through Antwerp-Berchem, due to light problems), they launched Railtime.be. I must say I’m surprised in a positive way.

Ok, it has a simple (ugly?) layout, it uses asp and .htm extentions… But hey, we got a site, that isn’t too slow, and seems to provide correct information for now… :P

Too bad there’s no mobile version available.

Guess it’s one of those things to add to iRail… ;)

Over & out, going back to study!

Edit: Website: no delays, all ok; station: “unknown delay” (= 30+ mins)… SEEMS TO BE WORKING GREAT. REALLY.

NMBS times

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 12:09:21 +0100

Don’t forget, as of today the belgian (and most other) trains will be using a new time sheet. Use iRail to get to your destination… ;)

And a quick switch !

Yeri Tiete — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:22:41 +0200

For the lazy people, like me!

If, for some reason, the buttons have two different sizes or you see some weird stuff, try to refresh the page. You should get the new & updated .css file.

Quick reset!

Yeri Tiete — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 01:33:03 +0200

I’ve added some “quick reset” javascript to the from and to fields. Should be easier to use, if you want to change stations. Hope the link isn’t too small for the iPhone-finger. :) – This is a request for comments !

There also were a little over 1000 visitors yesterday (Thursday) on the website. Not bad! :)

Touch icon

Yeri Tiete — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:30:37 +0200

Anner has designed me a very first version of the iRail icon. He’ll keep on working on it, when he has some more time.

As for the *@irail.be e-mail addresses, they seem to be down due to bad DNS/MX records. It’s being solved as we speak, but might take a few hours to update.

Please use tuinslak [at] gmail [dot] com if you have anything to e-mail me.

iRail reviews

Yeri Tiete — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:49:15 +0200

So far, two iPhone sites have written something about iRail; and here are the links.

Special thanks to these website, they have greatly improved the number of visitors so far.

iRail maps

Yeri Tiete — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 01:32:06 +0200

When submitting information on the B-rail site, you get some kind of “map info” with the train station.

Now, when submitting the same information through the iRail website, the same link was added to the results. Yet, these links were broken/unavailable, because the session with the NMBS/SNCB site was no longer valid.

I have now replaced these links with Google Maps links. They are not only displaying the station’s location, but also the directions (by car, that is. I guess Google won’t be adding “train directions” anywhere soon) to eachother.

This will open the native Maps app on the iPhone.

Special thanks to alastair for helping out on this one.

iRail translations

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 18:07:38 +0200

I’m looking for people to test out the iRail website in the four different languages, to check for any spelling mistakes. Should you find any, please report them to bugs[@]irail[.]be.

Thanks

iRail updates

Yeri Tiete — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:11:01 +0200

I’ve made some more changes to iRail;

small link (top, left corner) to refresh/go to the main page
fixed an issue where the dropdown menus would display HH:MM when it should be HH+1:MM - e.g. if the time was 17h55, it would display 17h00 instead of 18h00
added a return/back button to the results page
changed (shortened) the Dutch text of "noresults/" page, to fit the text on one line (on the iPhone)
changed the settings icon to something more... "settings" and less "info"
Removed the link from iRail.be to m.iRail.be. iRail.be will now be the main site
added "arrival" and "departure" options, to specify whether you want to arrive or depart at that time
created a bugs and feedback email address - bugs[@]irail[.]be and feedback[@]irail[.]be
the touch-icon should be here soon

iRail

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:50:22 +0200

iRail.be will be the new domain for my NMBS/SNCB iPhone Route Planner.

And expect some more updates by the end of the week. :)

Route Planner translation

Yeri Tiete — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 23:34:44 +0200

I’ve started translating little bits of the website, into French, Dutch and German (though some of it is still in English). I’ll be translating more the coming days (if it’s needed). Please report all typo’s you should encounter.

You can change the language options on the settings page.

Route Planner station auto-complete

Yeri Tiete — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:27:40 +0200

I’ve built-in a new function; the station name “auto-complete".

When starting to type in a station name (starting at the 3rd char), it will suggest station names, and you can just tab them to select.

I made a txt file with all station names I found on the NMBS website. I hope it’s up to date, and if there are any stations missing, please report. :)

The station names depend on their location within Belgium. Flemish stations are Dutch only, Walloon stations French only. Everything inbetween (e.g. Brussels) is in both languages.

Route Planner bug fix

Yeri Tiete — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:55:11 +0200

I just fixed a bug where he wouldn’t query the NMBS website if you hadn’t picked your language yet. Default language has been set to English.

Thanks to Helene.

Route Planner updates

Yeri Tiete — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:53:48 +0200

These are the things I’ve worked on:

changed color to dark blue
added a seperate settings page (you can only change the results page language at the moment (the content downloaded from the NMBS website))
language settings is saved in a cookie
station info is saved in a cookie too, instead of a session
changed date and time to use a dropdown menu and the menu should be updated to "now"
and many more small changes

Website is accessible through this link: https://yeri.be

Thanks to Anner for the great feedback.

NMBS/SNCB for iPhone

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:28:45 +0200

As there is no iPhone compatible website or application, I created my own NMBS “route planner” for the iPhone. This is no app though, this is just an iPhone website.

Basicly, this is what you can do:

fill in departure station
fill in arrival station
fill in time and date (of departure)

At this stage of the project, only the basic train details are shown (departure time, arrival time) and up to 3 or 4 different possibilities (depending what the NMBS website replies).

There is no option (and I’m unsure whether there will be in the future) to see details about a selected trip (like stops and station changes).

The site is made in English, but you can choose in what language you want the results, the only problem I’ve seen so far is that for DE and EN all train station names are in French (Antwerp becomes Anvers), but this “bug” lies out of my hands, as all train information is received from the NMBS websites, including station names.

Basicly this is what it does: it opens a HTTP socket to the NMBS site, filling in your details (like date and stations), and gets the reply back (if the NMBS site replies in time, I’ve seen a few time outs).

All unrequired information is cut off, and you remain with just the trip details. Which should just fit your iPhone in landscape mode.

When filling in your station details, please use existing stations names (language shouldn’t matter), including Central, North, South, etc if needed. Requesting the station “Brussels” won’t work and will just display an empty page for now.

Things I’ll be working on:

layout and design of the trip detail page
I've seen that my Sessions do some weird stuff from time to time (refresh the main page 2x and all sessions are destroyed); but that's something I'll have to look in
Well, I guess most users want more information, so I'll have to try to get trip details
and better data handling. Still too much unrequired information.
Error handling, if e.g. the station doesn't exist or the date/time is incorrect

Please leave your feedback/bug reports in a comment or per e-mail.

Also, if visiting the website with Firefox, I E or even Chrome… Yes, it’s not compatible to any of them. My website looks dodgy in those browsers; I’ve only focussed on the iPhone browser.

NMBS API?

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 04:43:14 +0200

While trying to find an API or “mobile” (read: iPhone) access for the NMBS website, I came upon some cool stuff.

The time table and train managing software seems made in Germany. The NMBS “look up” site gives you the software and version it is using ("Software versie/dataversie: HAFAS 5.21.B-RAIL.4.7f/5.21.B-RAIL.4.7k - 14/09/08").

Googling for Hafas returns some cool websites.

Using this one, you can download a pdf with all train (including hours) info between two stations. Not quite the same as an API-key, but at least you have something you can save and use lateron.

This seems to be giving all stops a train will have (or all trains) between two stations. Though the “stoptrains” aren’t in the list, and the IR-train does stop at Mechelen-Nekkerspoel too, which isn’t on the list either. This PDF seems more accurate, and seems to be including all trains.

But still, the DB seem to be ahead of us (well, what country isn’t?). Here is one of the functionalities of HAFAS, which I haven’t seen on the NMBS site yet. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this seems something different. And… Windows-fucking-mobile-only.

Pretty much same problem with Thalys. They even made thalys.mobi, yet, when accessing it with the iPhone (as I lack other PDA-ish devices to test it at the moment) it doesn’t scale/resize/fit my screen, and is displaying the same window I have when browsing it with Firefox.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we had some open (xml?) API, where we could submit departure station, arrival station, and some time, and get a reply with one or multiple results?

I guess I would’ve hoped for more in these “mobile” days.

Edit: my attempt to make something.