gtfs-to-html

GTFS to HTML

gtfs-to-html creates human-readable, user-friendly transit timetables in HTML format directly from GTFS transit data. Most transit agencies have schedule data in GTFS format but need to show each route's schedule to users on a website. This project automates the process of creating nicely formatted HTML schedules for inclusion on a transit agency website. This makes it easy to keep schedules up to date and accurate when schedule changes happen and reduces the likelihood of errors.

Configurable and customizable

gtfs-to-html has many options that configure how schedules are presented. It also allows using a completely custom template which makes it easy to build chunks of HTML that will fit perfectly into any website using any HTML structure and classes that you'd like.

Accessibility for all

gtfs-to-html properly formats timetables to ensure they are screen-reader accessible and WCAG 2.0 compliant.

Mobile responsiveness built in

Built-in styling makes gtfs-to-html timetables ready to size and scroll easily on mobile phones and tablets.

Schedule changes? A cinch.

By generating future timetables and including dates in table metadata, your timetables can appear in advance of a schedule change, and you can validate that your new timetables and GTFS are correct.

Auto-generated maps

gtfs-to-html can also generate a map for each route that can be included with the schedule page. The map shows all stops for the route and lists all routes that serve each stop. See the showMap configuration option below. If you'd rather just get all stops and route info as geoJSON, check out the gtfs-to-geojson package.

gtfs-to-html uses the node-gtfs library to handle importing and querying GTFS data.

Current Usage

Many transit agencies use gtfs-to-html to generate the schedule pages used on their websites, including:

• Advance Transit
• Capital Transit (Juneau)
• County Connection (Contra Costa County, California)
• El Dorado County
• Humboldt Transit Authority
• Kings Area Rural Transit (KART)
• Madera County Connection
• Marin Transit
• Mountain Transit
• NW Connector (Oregon)
• Palo Verde Valley Transit Agency
• Petaluma Transit
• Sonoma Country Transit

Are you using gtfs-to-html? Let us know via opening a github issue or pull request if your agency is using this library.

gtfs-to-html is used as an integral part of transit-custom-posts - a GTFS-optimized Wordpress plugin for transit websites.

Installation

If you would like to use this library as a command-line utility, you can install it globally directly from npm:

npm install gtfs-to-html -g

If you are using this as a node module as part of an application, you can include it in your project's package.json file.

Command-line example

gtfs-to-html --configPath /path/to/your/custom-config.json

Code example

const gtfsToHTML = require('gtfs-to-html');
const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const config = require('config.json');

mongoose.Promise = global.Promise;
mongoose.connect(config.mongoUrl);

gtfsToHTML(config)
.then(() => {
  console.log('HTML Generation Successful');
})
.catch(err => {
  console.error(err);
});

Configuration

Copy config-sample.json to config.json and then add your projects configuration to config.json.

cp config-sample.json config.json

All files starting with config*.json are .gitignored - so you can create multiple configuration files such as config-caltrain.json.

option	type	description
agencies	array	An array of GTFS files to be imported.
beautify	boolean	Whether or not to beautify the HTML output.
coordinatePrecision	integer	Number of decimal places to include in geoJSON map output.
effectiveDate	string	A date to print at the top of the timetable
linkStopUrls	boolean	Whether or not to hyperlink timetable stop names to the stop_url defined in stops.txt.
mapboxAccessToken	string	The Mapbox access token for generating a map of the route.
menuType	string	The type of menu to use for selecting timetables on a timetable page.
mongoUrl	string	The URL of the MongoDB database to import to.
noHead	boolean	Whether or not to skip the header and footer of the HTML document.
noServiceSymbol	string	The symbol used when a specific trip does not serve a specified stop.
requestDropoffSymbol	string	The symbol used to indicate that riders must request a drop off at a stop.
requestPickupSymbol	string	The symbol used to indicate that riders must request a pickup at a stop.
interpolatedStopSymbol	string	The symbol used to indicate that a timepoint isn't fixed, but just interpolated.
showMap	boolean	Whether or not to show a map of the route on the timetable.
showOnlyTimepoint	boolean	Whether or not all stops should be shown, or only stops with a timepoint value in stops.txt.
showRouteTitle	boolean	Whether or not to show the route title at the top of the timetable page.
showStopCity	boolean	Whether or not to show each stop's city.
templatePath	string	Path to custom pug template for rendering timetable.
verbose	boolean	Whether or not to print output to the console.
zipOutput	boolean	Whether or not to zip the output into one zip file.

agencies

{Array} Specify the GTFS files to be imported in an agencies array. GTFS files can be imported via a url or a local path.

Each file needs an agency_key, a short name you create that is specific to that GTFS file. For GTFS files that contain more than one agency, you only need to list each GTFS file once in the agencies array, not once per agency that it contains.

To find an agency's GTFS file, visit transitfeeds.com. You can use the URL from the agency's website or you can use a URL generated from the transitfeeds.com API along with your API token.

• Specify a download URL:

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "county-connection",
      "url": "http://cccta.org/GTFS/google_transit.zip"
    }
  ]
}

• Specify a path to a zipped GTFS file:

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "myAgency",
      "path": "/path/to/the/gtfs.zip"
    }
  ]
}

• Specify a path to an unzipped GTFS file:

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "myAgency",
      "path": "/path/to/the/unzipped/gtfs/"
    }
  ]
}

• Exclude files - if you don't want all GTFS files to be imported, you can specify an array of files to exclude.

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "myAgency",
      "path": "/path/to/the/unzipped/gtfs/",
      "exclude": [
        "shapes",
        "stops"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

• Optionally specify a proj4 projection string to correct poorly formed coordinates in the GTFS file

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "myAgency",
      "path": "/path/to/the/unzipped/gtfs/",
      "proj": "+proj=lcc +lat_1=46.8 +lat_0=46.8 +lon_0=0 +k_0=0.99987742 +x_0=600000 +y_0=2200000 +a=6378249.2 +b=6356515 +towgs84=-168,-60,320,0,0,0,0 +pm=paris +units=m +no_defs"
    }
  ]
}

beautify

{Boolean} Whether or not to beautify the HTML output. Defaults to false.

    "beautify": false

coordinatePrecision

{Integer} The number of decimal places to include in the latitude and longitude of coordinates in GeoJSON used in maps. Omit to avoid any rounding. 5 is a reasonable value (about 1.1 meters).

    "coordinatePrecision": 5

effectiveDate

{String} This is printed at the top of the timetable.

    "effectiveDate": "July 8, 2015"

linkStopUrls

{Boolean} Whether or not to hyperlink timetable stop names to the stop_url defined in stops.txt. If no stop_url is defined for a stop, no link will be created. Defaults to false.

    "linkStopUrls": false

mapboxAccessToken

{String} The Mapbox access token for generating a map of the route.

    "mapboxAccessToken": "pk.eyXaX5F8oCJSYedim3yCnTGsVBfnRjsoXdy4Ej7ZZZydrCn2WMDXha5bPj5.bPj5xsBo8u8N8GJqJh"

menuType

{String} The type of menu to use for selecting or navigating to timetables on timetable pages with multiple timetables. Valid choices are none, simple, jump and radio. Defaults to simple.

    "menuType": "jump"

mongoUrl

{String} The MongoDB URI use. When running locally, you may want to use mongodb://localhost:27017/gtfs.

{
  "mongoUrl": "mongodb://localhost:27017/gtfs",
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "myAgency",
      "path": "/path/to/the/unzipped/gtfs/"
    }
  ]
}

noHead

{Boolean} Whether or not to skip the HTML head and footer when generating the HTML. This is useful for creating embeddable HTML without <html>, <head> or <body> tags. Defaults to false.

    "noHead": false

noServiceSymbol

{String} The symbol used when a specific trip does not serve a specified stop. Defaults to -.

    "noServiceSymbol": "-"

requestDropoffSymbol

{String} The symbol used to indicate that riders must request to be dropped off at a stop. Defaults to †.

    "requestDropoffSymbol": "†"

requestPickupSymbol

{String} The symbol used to indicate that riders must request pickup at a stop. Defaults to ***.

    "requestPickupSymbol": "***"

interpolatedStopSymbol

{String} The symbol used to indicate that a timepoint isn't fixed, but just interpolated. Defaults to •.

    "interpolatedStopSymbol": "•"

showMap

{Boolean} Whether or not to show a map of the route on the timetable. Defaults to false.

If you'd rather just get all stops and route info as geoJSON, see gtfs-to-geojson.

    "showMap": false

showOnlyTimepoint

{Boolean} Whether or not all stops should be shown, or only stops with a timepoint value in stop_times.txt that is considered exact (i.e. empty or 1). Defaults to false, all stops shown.

    "showOnlyTimepoint": false

showRouteTitle

{Boolean} Whether or not to show the route title at the top of the timetable page. Defaults to true, showing the route title.

    "showRouteTitle": true

showStopCity

{Boolean} Whether or not to show the city for each stop. City is determined by the stop_city field in the non-standard stop_attributes.txt. Only has an effect when the timetable's orientation is horizontal or hourly. Defaults to false.

    "showStopCity": false

templatePath

{String} Path to a folder containing (pug)[https://pugjs.org/] template for rendering timetables. This is optional. Defaults to using the templates provided in views/timetable. All files within the /views/custom folder will be .gitignored, so you can copy the views/timetable folder to views/custom/myagency and make any modifications needed. Any custom views folder should conatain pug templates called timetablepage.pug, timetablepage_full.pug, overview.pug, and overview_full.pug.

    "templatePath": 'views/custom/my-agency/'

verbose

{Boolean} If you don't want the import script to print any output to the console, you can set verbose to false. Defaults to true.

    "verbose": false

zipOutput

{Boolean} Whether or not to zip the output into one zip file named timetables.zip. Defaults to false.

    "zipOutput": false

Build timetables.txt

This project supports an additional non-standard file timetables.txt which can be included in an agency's GTFS. This file specifies to GTFS-to-HTML which HTML timetables should be built.

An example of this file is located in examples/timetables.txt. The format of this file is:

column name	description
timetable_id	A unique ID for the timetable
route_id	The ID of the route the timetable is for from routes.txt.
direction_id	The direction_id from trips.txt for the timetable. This can be blank.
start_date	The start date for this timetable in YYYY-MM-DD format.
end_date	The end date for this timetable in YYYY-MM-DD format.
monday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Mondays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
tuesday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Tuesdays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
wednesday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Wednesdays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
thursday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Thursdays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
friday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Fridays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
saturday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Saturdays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
sunday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Sundays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
include_exceptions	A binary value that indicates whether or not to include exceptions of type 1 from calendar_dates.txt, such as holiday service on a weekday. Valid options are 0 and 1. Optional, defaults to 0 (exceptions are not included by default).
timetable_label	A short text label describing the timetable, for instance "Route 4 Northbound Mon-Fri". Optional, defaults to route name and first and last stops.
service_notes	Text shown on the timetable about the service represented. Optional.
orientation	Determines if the top row should be a list of trips or stops. Valid options are vertical, horizontal or hourly. vertical shows stops across the top row with each row being a list of stop times for each trip. horizontal shows trips across the top row with each row being stop times for a specific stop. hourly is for routes that run the same time each hour and will print a simplified schedule showing minutes after the hour for each stop. horizontal orientation is best for routes with lots of stops and fewer trips while vertical orientation is best for routes with lots of trips and a smaller number of stops. Default is vertical
timetable_page_id	The timetable page to include this timetable on
timetable_sequence	The order that this timetable should appear on the timetable page
direction_name	The human readable name of the direction of the timetable, such as "Southbound"
show_continues_as	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should show an additional column or row indicating which trips continue on as a different route. This is calculated by trips that share the same block_id in trips.txt. Valid options are 0 and 1. Optional, defaults to 0.

Multi-route Timetables

To allow creating a single timetable for multiple routes that overlap, you can have multiple entries in timetables.txt for the same timetable_id. These multi-route entries should have the same values timetable_id, start_date, end_date, calendar date, service_notes and orientation fields and should have different values for the route_id and timetable_label fields.

Build timetable_stop_order.txt

This is an optional file that can specify stop order for a particular timetable. It is useful when generating combined timetables for multiple overlapping routes, or exerting fine-grained control on stop order.

An example of this file is located in examples/timetable_stop_order.txt. The format of this file is:

column name	description
timetable_id	The ID of the timetable from timetables.txt
stop_id	The ID of the stop from stops.txt.
stop_sequence	An assigned integer identifying the order of stops to be presented in the timetable. The values for stop_sequence must be non-negative integers, and they must increase along the trip. This value does not need to match the stop_sequence found in stop_times.txt.

Stops with different arrival and departure times

If you would like to show a stop twice in a row to accommodate different arrival and departure times, just include this stop twice in a row in the timetable_stop_order.txt file. Otherwise, the value for departure_time from stop_times.txt will always be used.

Build timetable_pages.txt

This project supports an additional non-standard file timetable_pages.txt which can be included in an agency's GTFS. This file specifies which HTML timetable to group together into a single HTML page.

An example of this file is located in examples/timetable_pages.txt. The format of this file is:

column name	description
timetable_page_id	A unique ID for the timetable page
timetable_page_label	A label that will show up on the top of the page. Optional, defaults to using route name.
filename	The filename to use for the generated HTML file. Optional, defaults to timetable_page_id with file extension .html, for example 1.html.

Build stop_attributes.txt

This is an optional file which can be included in an agency's GTFS to include additional information about specific stops. This can be used when styling timetables to add additional useful information not included in GTFS, such as the city that the stop is in

An example of this file is located in examples/stop_attributes.txt. This feature is in development and additional fields may be added or changes to the way this works could happen in the future.

The format of this file is:

column name	description
stop_id	A stop_id from stops.txt
stop_city	The name of the city or region that the stop is in.

Running

Ensure than MongoDB is running locally.

mongod

To generate HTML timetables, run gtfs-to-html.

gtfs-to-html

By default, gtfs-to-html will look for a config.json file in the project root. To specify a different path for the configuration file:

gtfs-to-html --configPath /path/to/your/custom-config.json

This will download the GTFS file specified in config.js . Then, gtfs-to-html will build the HTML timetables and save them in html/:agency_key.

Options

configPath

Allows specifying a configuration json file. Defaults to config.json in the current directory.

gtfs-to-html --configPath /path/to/your/custom-config.json

skipImport

Skips importing GTFS into MongoDB. Useful if you are rerunning with an unchanged GTFS file. If you use this option and the GTFS file hasn't been imported, you'll get an error.

gtfs-to-html --skipImport

Processing very large GTFS files.

By default, node has a memory limit of 512 MB or 1 GB. If you have a very large GTFS file and want to use the option showOnlyTimepoint = false you may need to allocate more memory. Use the max-old-space-size option. For example to allocate 2 GB:

node --max-old-space-size=2000 /usr/local/bin/gtfs-to-html

Example Application / Previewing generated HTML

An example Express application that uses gtfs-to-html is included in the app folder.

After an initial run of gtfs-to-html, the GTFS data will be downloaded and loaded into MongoDB.

You can view an individual route HTML on demand by running the included Express app:

node app

By default, gtfs-to-html will look for a config.json file in the project root. To specify a different path for the configuration file:

node app --configPath /path/to/your/custom-config.json

Once running, you can view the HTML in your browser at localhost:3000

Reviewing changes in HTML timetables

When an agency releases an updated GTFS file, it can be useful to review what has changed when generating HTML timetables. Use diff2html to easily compare two folders of html timetables.

First generate two folders of gtfs-to-html output to compare. To make it easy to see what has changed, set the beautify option to true in the config file for both sets of output.

Then, install diff2html:

npm install -g diff2html-cli

Use the diff command and pipe the output to diff2html to get a nicely formatted list of the differences between two folders of html files.

diff -bur html/folder1 html/folder2 |  diff2html -i stdin

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome, as is feedback and reporting issues.

Tests

npm test