A new version of BusTimes has been released by Kevin Wells, and new in this version is a selection of different file formats for exporting a bus’s timetable beyond plain text.
The application, which is now at version 1.09, makes use of Wget to interrogate the Transport API website to find out what buses stop at particular bus stops, and from there look at the routes of those buses. The new export options allow you to save that route as either:
- Plain text, allowing you to see the route in your preferred text editor, or load it into most applications that allow text to be processed.
- HTML, for viewing in a web browser.
- CSV, which can be imported into databases and spreadsheets, amongst other things.
- GPX, which can be imported into mapping applications like RiscOSM to display a map of the bus route.
When exporting as HTML, the resulting file contains the bus times, descriptions of the bus stops, and their ATCO Codes (unique identifiers for each stop), while the CSV export contains all of this, along with the latitudes and longitudes of the stops. As for GPX, Kevin says the contents of this file may change based upon user feedback, and with the more he learns about the file format.