Generate randomised journeys to take on the TfL network! Random TfL Journey Planner is a Flask-based web app that invents a random journey, then pulls data from the Tfl API, showing the steps of how to take the journey.
The app runs on a Flask backend with an Adapt UI frontend. Adapt UI is LiveG's "user interface library and design language for building consistent and appealing products". I used it for this project because, well, I'm on the LiveG staff team and it'd be wrong not to.
When you load the page, Flask serves you a static HTML page with Adapt UI's CSS taking care of the UI layout. As soon as you click the Generate Journey button, JavaScript running in your browser makes a request back to the Flask server on /journey. The Flask server chooses two random stations, calls the TfL API to calculate the journey, then returns the journey information to the JavaScript running in the browser. The JavaScript then inserts the data into the placeholder card, and if the app could not find the journey for whatever reason, it inserts an error message and logs the failed response to the console.
git clone https://github.com/tramcrazy/Random-TfL-Journey/
- Go here.
- Click sign in, then sign up.
- Once you're signed up and logged in, go to this product page.
- Come up with a name for the subscription (maybe RandomJourney) and hit Subscribe.
- Go to your profile.
- In Subscriptions, click Show next to the Primary Key - that string of letters and numbers is your key.
cd Random-TfL-Journey
export TFL_API_KEY=yourapikeygoeshere
$Env:TFL_API_KEY = "yourapikeygoeshere"
pip install -r requirements.txt
flask run
Visit http://localhost:5000 Try clicking the generate journey button. Wait a few seconds and a journey should appear! If you get an error, keep trying as the system isn't perfect!
I used a snippet of Josh Blewitt's code for help with parsing the TfL API responses.