PyBikes

PyBikes provides a set of tools to scrape bike sharing data from different websites and APIs, thus providing a coherent and generalized set of classes and methods to access this sort of information.

The library is distributed and intended mainly for statistics and data sharing projects. More importantly, it powers the [CityBikes] 1 project, and is composed of a set of classes and a pack of data files that provide instances for all different systems.

This experimental branch is being used on the [development server] 2, and when completion of bike network support is on par with the ones on the master branch, it will be used on production.

While the new structure of this library greatly improves usage, clarity and maintenance compared to the one on the master branch, this is still a work in progress. Therefore, syntax and implementation might change until we reach both completion and satisfaction.

Usage

>>> import pybikes

# Capital BikeShare instantiation data is in bixi.json file
>>> capital_bikeshare = pybikes.getBikeShareSystem(
        'bixi','capital-bikeshare'
    )

# The instance contains all possible metadata regarding this system
>>> print(capital_bikeshare.meta)
{
    'name': 'Capital BikeShare',
    'city': 'Washington, DC - Arlington, VA',
    'longitude': -77.0363658,
    'system': 'Bixi',
    'company': 'PBSC',
    'country': 'USA',
    'latitude': 38.8951118
}
# The update method retrieves the list of stations
>>> print(len(capital_bikeshare.stations))
0
>>> capital_bikeshare.update()
>>> print(len(capital_bikeshare.stations))
191
>>> print(capital_bikeshare.stations[0])
--- 31000 - 20th & Bell St ---
bikes: 7
free: 4
latlng: 38.8561,-77.0512
extra: {
    'installed': True,
    'uid': 1,
    'locked': False,
    'removalDate': '',
    'installDate': '1316059200000',
    'terminalName': '31000',
    'temporary': False,
    'name': '20th & Bell St',
    'latestUpdateTime': '1353454305589'
}

Some systems might require an API key to work (for instance, Cyclocity). In these cases, the instance factory can take an extra API key parameter.

>>> key = "This is not an API key"
>>> velib = pybikes.getBikeShareSystem('cyclocity', 'velib', key)

Note that pybikes works as an instance factory and, choicely, instances can be generated by passing the right arguments to the desired class

>>> from pybikes import BixiSystem
>>> capital_bikeshare = BixiSystem(
        tag = 'foo_tag',
        root_url = 'http://capitalbikeshare.com/data/stations/',
        meta = {'foo':'bar'}
    )

The way information is retrieved can be tweaked using the PyBikesScraper class included on the utils module thus allowing session reusing and niceties such as using a proxy. This class internally uses [Requests] 2, and when using an https proxy falls back to urllib2.

>>> scraper = pybikes.utils.PyBikesScraper()
>>> scraper.enableProxy()
>>> scraper.setProxies({
        "http" : "127.0.0.1:8118",
        "https": "127.0.0.1:8118"
    })
>>> scraper.setUserAgent("Walrus™ v3.0")
>>> scraper.headers['Foo'] = 'bar'
>>> capital_bikeshare.update(scraper)