Objective

Write a crawler for BoltBus that can extract:

• list of stops
• list of routes
• list of departures

Step 1: get stops

This process is done once to create a mapping between their stops and ours.

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 and the schema should be something like this:

[
	{
		"stop_name": "New York W 33rd St & 11-12th Ave (DC,BAL,BOS,PHL)",
		"stop_location":"611 W. 33rd Street, New York, NY, 10001",
		"lat":40.755661,
		"long":-74.00337
	}
]

The step should be invoked like so

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

Step 2: get routes

This process is done once to get the list of all possible routes with departures from this operator.

From this page, get the list of all possible routes, i.e., all valid stop pairings. The output should stored in routes.json and the schema should be something like this:

[
	{
		"origin": "New York W 33rd St & 11-12th Ave (DC,BAL,BOS,PHL)",
		"destination":"Boston South Station - Gate 9 NYC-Gate 10 NWK/PHL",
	},
	{
		"origin": "New York 1st Ave Between 38th & 39th (To BOS)",
		"destination":"Boston South Station - Gate 9 NYC-Gate 10 NWK/PHL",
	}
]

The step should be invoked like so

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

Step 3: 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. For each route in the list generated in step 2, get the list of all one-way departures for one passenger.

3. For each departure extract the following information:

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

The output should be stored in departures.json and the schema should look something like this:

[
	{
		"origin": "New York 1st Ave Between 38th & 39th (To BOS)",
		"destination": "Boston South Station - Gate 9 NYC-Gate 10 NWK/PHL",
		"departure_time": "2014-05-01T18:30:00",
		"arrival_time": "2014-05-01T22:45:00",
		"duration": "4:15",
		"price": 23.00
	}
]

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
• 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