Get live train status using Python

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
url = "https://www.railyatri.in/live-train-status/"+train_name

# 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
url = "https://www.railyatri.in/live-train-status/"+train_name

# 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.