Thread: VOICES Traffic Data

Looks good, looks like we now have data entries for at least two places in the world, and test clients to prove the data works,feels like we're slowly getting somewhere.

I'm going to adjust my test client and the data feed first of all to show the direction of the incident, I was looking to use a different pushpin (custom ones) with arrows attached to see if this is usable and then look at identifing the type of incident also, should have something done by the weekend.

I also want to release the source but I need to re-write the GPS part first myself, now I have a basic idea of how to do it, it shouldnt be a problem

stevieg: Are you grabbing your speeds from your database or are you grabbing the actually xml feed? Just curious if you ever got the mysql server setup to get speeds from. One thing with my setup is you have to grab quite a few html pages to get the speeds off them.. It can take a little while because its whole pages of html for every direction on every interstate for a given region. It would be a lot faster to have that data in a DB and just query for the speeds based on intersection name... That xml file that is included in the Traffic folder of the application shows you how my xml is setup. Based on that RDURL for each subsection of intersections I get the speed for each given Intersection, based on the Intersection name... I have a function that basically grabs all the html from the RDURL and then loops through the intersections and grabs the speed based on the intersection name. I like your earlier idea of having a program that runs my code that I currently run every few minutes and updates a DB.. I can get you the function this weekend and you have the XML...

I would prolly want to leave the xml local to the application and just query a table that has maybe RDURL, Intersection, Speed... That way I only transfer the data I need.

Originally Posted by veetid

stevieg: Are you grabbing your speeds from your database or are you grabbing the actually xml feed? Just curious if you ever got the mysql server setup to get speeds from. One thing with my setup is you have to grab quite a few html pages to get the speeds off them.. It can take a little while because its whole pages of html for every direction on every interstate for a given region. It would be a lot faster to have that data in a DB and just query for the speeds based on intersection name... That xml file that is included in the Traffic folder of the application shows you how my xml is setup. Based on that RDURL for each subsection of intersections I get the speed for each given Intersection, based on the Intersection name... I have a function that basically grabs all the html from the RDURL and then loops through the intersections and grabs the speed based on the intersection name. I like your earlier idea of having a program that runs my code that I currently run every few minutes and updates a DB.. I can get you the function this weekend and you have the XML...

I would prolly want to leave the xml local to the application and just query a table that has maybe RDURL, Intersection, Speed... That way I only transfer the data I need.

I've got the MySQL set up and working, that's what the app downloads from, it also allows the web user to choose the feeds and have more than one.

The MySQL / php allows the user to download as either XML or CSV, I chose the use CSV in my app.

Yes it is probably a good idea if you get me the function and we can make it update the DB, I have spare resources to host a Windows app. Ideally if you can make it run as a service I can plonk a Windows box somewhere with MapPoint installed and leave it to do the job of updating the DB.

The DB updates this app would do however would need to call HTTP requests rather than ODBC calls, as my hosting does not have remote access to the MySQL server, I would program a small php app to securly do this using http.

I take it that it would then upload lat/lon and I would add an extra table for speed into the DB. I am also going to add an extra field for direction (N,W,S,E etc) and make my feeds populate the incident type.

Currently my lat/longs are in the xml file that was included with the application. They are static now that I have them geocoded. All my service/program would need to do is update the speeds based on the lat/long/intersections in the xml file and update a DB. It wouldn't need mappoint or anything like that. It is a simple HTTP scrap. I will try to put something together, maybe at first just as an exe.

Disappointingly, there seems to be very little available for Australia for the moment. However, I did find this --> http://www.transportroundtable.com.au/im/resources.html, which might be a useful summary resource for what is happening worldwide. There are bunch of other things on that site, but this page, although old, is a half decent summary.

C!