A Plasma5/Qml applet that displays timetable data fetched from the publictransport dataengine in a list view format

The publictransport applet, in KDE4, had two distinct types of service providers:

1. Scripted type service providers
2. General Transit Feed Specification(GTFS) type service providers

The service providers provide public transport timetable data, like stops from A to B, or a list of arrivals/departures at particular stop along with the departure date/time. This data was displayed in a neat Plasma applet in KDE4 along with features like adding an alarm for transport, autocompletion of stop names and displaying mete data like stops in a journey and more.

Know more about the KDE4 Plasma public transport applet

During this summer, efforts were made to bring back this applet to Plasma5. This however, was not a straightforward task as applets in Plasma5 are primarily written in Qml and a port of the applet meant a complete re-write of the UI. Obviously, the public transport dataengine also needed porting to KF5. The dataengine returned QVariantHash data which is not consumable by Qml. Hence the engine had to be ported away from QVariantHash to QVariantMap.

In it's current state, the public transport dataengine provides the possibility to

1. Discover local service provider files(.pts file format)
2. Carry out GTFS service operations, viz
   • GTFS database import
   • GTFS feed update
   • GTFS database update
   • GTFS database deletion

Once installed, the public transport dataengine can be accessed via plasmaengineexplorer

    $ plasmaengineexplorer --engine publictransport

Scripted type service providers in KDE4, relied upon QtScript to parse feeds to retrieve timetable data. However, QtScript was deprecated in Qt's 5.5 release without a direct alternative and hence such service providers won't function in a KF5 setup, as we can now no longer pass Qt extensions to QScriptEngine.

This meant either writing a C++ class to provide support for scripted service providers or to completely switch to GTFS type service providers.

At this point, it is both easier and sensible to switch to using GTFS type service providers in KF5 as GTFS specifies a common standard for the data, making it easier to handle.

• publictransport dataengine - "kf5" branch
• GTFS Service providers
• KDE Frameworks 5
• Qt and QtQuick libraries

You can download GTFS service providers from KDE Look. Currently, the page at KDE Look also displays scripted type service providers which are still useful in a KDE4 session and hence not removed. Be sure to see if the service provider you've downloaded is a GTFS type service provider. This can be easily verified in plasmaengineexplorer.

If you are unable to find a service provider for your location, you can add a service provider of your own. Modify the relevant XML tags of this example GTFS service provider file and place it in the engine's installation subdirectory.

The public transport dataengine recognizes service provider files with ".pts" extensions. The filename without the extension forms your service provider Id. So it is important to name your service provider filename correctly. As a rule of thumb, service provider Id's follow the following format

    <country_shortcode>_<agency/provider>.<extension>

Hence, for example, a service provider for Oslo, in Norway provided by Ruter Inc. would be named as no_ruter.pts and no_ruter becomes the service provider Id. Use lower case characters in naming your service provider file.

To view departures and/or arrivals, we must first create a datasource in the dataengine. The general format of an arrival or departure source is as follows :

    Departures <serviceProviderId>|stop=<stopName>

or

    Arrivals <serviceProviderId>|stop=<stopName>

A departure source for eg, would look like the following

    Departures no_ruter|stop=Oslo Bussterminal

Where serviceProviderId = no_ruter and stopName = Oslo Bussterminal. Once you know the serviceProviderId and stopName, in plasmaengineexplorer, type your source name in the field with placeholder "Source Name" and request for the source.

Please note that the source names are case-sensitive and this must be taken into consideration when forming a new datasource.

As things stand, service providers for the public transport dataengine have to be configured manually. Configuration UI is WIP and it's current state can be found in this repository itself. The UI is, as one would expect, being written in Qml.

Untill the configuration UI's are ready, to configure service providers, you must do the following:

1. Create a directory plasma_engine_publictransport/serviceProviders inside ~/.local/share and move your downloaded service provider file inside it. This is your installation subdirectory
2. Launch plasmaengineexplorer and check if your service provider is discovered correctly.
3. Start the "GTFS" service
   • Type "GTFS" in the field with placeholder "Service for source" and start a request.
4. Now select the "importGtfsFeed" operation and enter the service provider Id in the value field.
   • Service provider Id is the name of your service provider filename, without the extensions(.pts)
5. Once the GTFS feed is imported successfully, relaunch plasmaengineexplorer and test for an arrival or departure source

You should now be able to view departure or arrival details, depending on your source in the dataengine.

Once you have setup and tested that your service provider works flawlessly in plasmaengineexplorer with your datasource, you are ready to view this in data in your applet. In file timetable/contents/ui/Timetable.qml, replace the value of connectedSources with that of your arrival/departure datasource name.

Install and launch the applet to view timetable data for the stop of your choice.

    $ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/your/custom/install/prefix ..
    $ make install
    $ kbuildsycoca5

It is recommended that you install this applet, which currently needs testing, in a custom non-root prefix.

You can launch the applet using plasmawindowed or add it as a widget from your desktop.

    $ plasmawindowed org.kde.plasma.publictransport.timetable