Suppose you want to travel to places using Indian Railways and have booked a train. But you are not sure that the train is on time or not and doing this manually can be very hectic. So in this article, we are going to write a Python script to get live train status using a train name or train code.
Modules needed
- bs4: Beautiful Soup(bs4) is a Python library for pulling data out of HTML and XML files. This module does not come built-in with Python. To install this type the below command in the terminal.
pip install bs4
- requests: Request allows you to send HTTP/1.1 requests extremely easily. This module also does not come built-in with Python. To install this type the below command in the terminal.
pip install requests
Let’s see the stepwise execution of the script.
Step 1: Import all dependence
Python3
# import module # import pandas as pd import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup |
Step 2: Create a URL get function
Python3
# user define function # Scrape the data def getdata(url): r = requests.get(url) return r.text |
Step 3: Now merge the train name into URL and pass the URL into the getdata() function and Convert that data into HTML code.
Note: Strongly recommended you to get Train name and code from here. Click
Python3
# input by geek train_name = "03391-rajgir-new-delhi-clone-special-rgd-to-ndls" # url # pass the url # into getdata function htmldata=getdata(url) soup = BeautifulSoup(htmldata, 'html.parser') # display html code print(soup) |
Output:
Step 4: Traverse the live status from the HTML document.
Python3
# traverse the live status from # this Html code data = [] for item in soup.find_all('script', type="application/ld+json"): data.append(item.get_text()) # convert into dataframe df = pd.read_json (data[2]) # display this column of # dataframe print(df["mainEntity"][0]) |
Output:
{‘@type’: ‘Question’, ‘name’: ‘Q) Where is my train (03391) RGD NDLS HUMSFR ?’,
‘acceptedAnswer’: {‘@type’: ‘Answer’, ‘text’: ‘A: 03391 RGD NDLS HUMSFR is 10 kms to VARANASI JN (312 kms Covered so far). It is expected to reach New Delhi by 02:30.’}}
Step 5: Now get the required data from this directory.
Python3
print(df["mainEntity"][0]['name']) print(df["mainEntity"][0]['acceptedAnswer']['text']) |
Output:
Q) Where is my train (03391) RGD NDLS HUMSFR ?
A: 03391 RGD NDLS HUMSFR is 10 kms to VARANASI JN (312 kms Covered so far). It is expected to reach New Delhi by 02:30.
Full implementation:
Python3
# import module import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup import pandas as pd # user define function # Scrape the data def getdata(url): r = requests.get(url) return r.text # input by geek train_name = "03391-rajgir-new-delhi-clone-special-rgd-to-ndls" # url # pass the url # into getdata function htmldata = getdata(url) soup = BeautifulSoup(htmldata, 'html.parser') # traverse the live status from # this Html code data = [] for item in soup.find_all('script', type="application/ld+json"): data.append(item.get_text()) # convert into dataframe df = pd.read_json(data[2]) # display this column of # dataframe print(df["mainEntity"][0]['name']) print(df["mainEntity"][0]['acceptedAnswer']['text']) |
Output:
Q) Where is my train (03391) RGD NDLS HUMSFR ?
A: 03391 RGD NDLS HUMSFR is 6 kms to VARANASI JN (316 kms Covered so far). It is expected to reach New Delhi by 02:30.
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