Objective

Write a crawler for National Express that can extract:

• list of stops
• list of departures

Step 1: get stops

This process is done once to create a mapping between National Express stops and existing stops, if possible.

From this page, get the list of all bus stops including the address, latitude and longitude. The output should be stored in a stops.json file and the schema should be something like this:

[
  {
    "stop_name": "Dundee, Scotland",
    "stop_location":"Seagate Dundee, Seagate Bus Station, Tayside Scotland",
    "lat":56.46338,
    "long":-2.9657300000000077
  }
]

The step should be invoked like so

python run.py --extract stops --output stops.json

Step 2: get departures

This process is done repeatedly to update our database of departure. As an input, this function should accept an origin, destination and a range of dates for which departures will be returned.

1. Go to this page
2. Use the normal view or accessible view from the 'choose your journey' box to get a list of departures for each origin-destination pair of stops obtained in step 1.
3. For each departure extract the following information:

• origin_stop
• destination_stop
• departure time
• arrival time
• duration
• adult one-way price

The output should be stored in departures.json

The step should be invoked like so

python run.py --extract departures --output departures.json --startdate 2013-11-13 --enddate 2013-11-20

Non-functional requirements

• the code should be written in Python and compatible with Python 2.7.
• the code should be hosted on github, and the repo should be shared with Busbud and submitted as a pull request
• the code should be written in a way that it can easily be extended to become a scheduled process that updates our database of departure
• any packages required must be installable via pip install -r requirements.txt, see pip