Metlink Departure Boards (CLI)

A command line interface (CLI) to display departure boards for buses in Wellington, New Zealand. This make an HTTP request to the Metlink API to retrieve times. The CLI filters the departure board for a stop by service, and supports cancellations, wheelchair access.

Example

Here is an example output given from the CLI.

1    Island Bay      9min
1    Island Bay      9min    ♿
1    Island Bay      CAN
1    Island Bay      08:17AM
1    Island Bay      08:32AM
1    Island Bay      08:47AM
1    Island Bay      09:04AM
1    Island Bay      09:17AM
1    Island Bay      09:32AM
1    Island Bay      09:49AM
1    Island Bay      10:04AM
1    Island Bay      10:19AM
1    Island Bay      10:34AM

It is designed to mimic the Metservice Wellington Departure Timetables for a given stop.

Usage

When we run the client, we give the stop_id and service_id as arguments, with optional argument limit.

# cargo run <stop_id> <service_id> [limit]
$ cargo run 5510 1 5;

stop_id

We can find the stop_id on the Metlink website (https://www.metlink.org.nz/), simply find you desired stop, click on it, and the 4 digit number correspnds to the stop_id, e.g. "Stop 5510 Willis Street at Willbank Court" has the stop_id of 5510.

service_id

The service_id is the number of the bus, e.g. the "1 - Island Bay" has the service_id of 1.

limit

The limit is an optional argument, where the user can specify the number of departures to display. Given in chronological order showing the nearest services first. If the limit is not specified, all departures returned by the API call are shown. E.g. the command above with limit of 5 will only show the next 5 departures.

Bash API call

This bash script gives the API call to the Metlink API for reference.

$ curl -X GET "https://api.opendata.metlink.org.nz/v1/stop-predictions?stop_id=<stop_id>" -H "accept: application/json" -H "x-api-key: <api-key>"

Install Rust

You need rust installed on your machine in order to run the development environment. Rust can be installed on a Linux platform using the following command.

$ curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh