A set of tools to generate a live map of trains on the Washington Metro, using data from the WMATA API. This project is a rewrite and cleanup of code that I wrote a long time ago in an effort to make it work with little to no manual intervention (and also generally clean it up)
Because I don't want to mess with copyright stuff by rehosting WMATA data, and because I want to provide a mechanism for updating the data should it change over time (e.g. new stations, etc), there are a series of tools that must be run before you can get the live map working. These tools fetch some static data from the WMATA API and manipulate/combine/transform it into forms that are easier to deal with in the main code. The following directions will help you configure and run the tools.
- Obtain an API key from WMATA (free) and place it in the
datadirectory in a file namedWMATA_API_KEY.txt - If you just want to get up and running quickly, run the
autoconfigure.shscript in thetoolsdirectory. This will run the necessary tools (each tool does only one thing) and get thedatadirectory properly configured. NOTE: You must run this script from inside the tools directory at the moment. - If you'd like to obtain one of the intermediate data files, would like to fetch everything manually, or would like to update one, you can run the tools individually. Look at the README in each tool's directory for more info on what it needs to run.
- Set up MapKit JS credentials (see
main/README.mdfor more details)
You do not need to do both step 2 and step 3 -- pick one or the other.
You can then run the main positions server that obtains live positions from the WMATA API and processes them with the data derived from the tools
with node main/server.js. Then you can use webpage/mapkit.html to view the positions live updating.
MIT