Goodservice Save Abandoned
Website that detects headway discrepancy on New York City Subway system using live countdown clocks
This repo is deprecated. The app has been re-written and its new source code can be found at https://github.com/blahblahblah-/goodservice-v2.
goodservice
This is a Rails app that generates live route maps, detects headway discrepancies, track delays and compare runtimes to the schedule on the New York City Subway system by comparing the data for live countdown clocks with the static schedule data provided by the MTA.
See it live at https://www.goodservice.io.
Running locally
To run locally, you'll need a couple things. First, the app has only been tested with Ruby 2.4.2 and Rails 5.2. We suggest managing this with rbenv. It also depends on Redis, Postgres, Yarn, and Semantic UI React. If you are on a Mac with Homebrew installed, you can get all these requirements with the following commands:
# Ruby dependencies
brew install rbenv
brew install ruby-build
rbenv install 2.4.2
gem install bundler
gem install rails
gem install foreman
# Other dependencies
brew install postgresql
brew install redis
brew install node
npm install -g yarn
Next, you'll need to sign up for a developer account with the MTA. To do so, go to https://api.mta.info. You'll get an API key and set it as MTA_KEY env variable.
Finally, you'll need to download the current static schedules from the MTA. Go to https://web.mta.info/developers/developer-data-terms.html, agree to the terms, and then download the data for New York City Transit. (Ctrl+F for "GTFS".) Put this into the import folder and unzip it.
Finally, to run the app locally, do
export MTA_KEY=<<YOUR API KEY>>
bundle install
yarn install
initdb
rails db:reset # This will take a *very* long time on its first run
rails dev:cache
foreman start
A brief tour of the code
This is a Rails app that uses React as a view manager. As such, there are a lot of moving components. We briefly explain how data flows and how the code is laid out.
Server side: Rails
The server performs two major functions: First, it runs a cron job that updates the current status of all routes and lines. This cron job is located in /lib/clock.rb. It is currently hard coded to refresh train data every minute and to refresh route data every five minutes.
Second, it actually serves up the route info that is processed by this cron job. In particular, a Redis cache maintains all the headway info that is served by API (described below). All of the models that are used to process this information live in either /app/models or, closer to the ultimate product, in /app/models/display. If you want to start tracing through the code, you should begin at the self.headway_info function in /app/models/schedule_processor.rb.
A rake job at /lib/tasks/scheduler.rake is to be run daily to compile runtimes comparison history from the model LineDirectionStatus into JSON and stored into the LineStatusSummary model, as the LineDirectionStatus table can get really big. The job is indempotent, so it would not be a problem if it ran more than once.
Another cron job located in /lib/clock.rb runs daily at midnight to clear out old rows of data storing train statuses that drive the pretty graphs and historical stats.
Client side: React
The client side view libraries are a React app that is compiled by the webpacker gem. For more information on webpacker, you can see their repository. But the basic summary is that all entry points (in React lingo) live in /app/javascript/packs and are compiled to the /public directory. As with all Rails apps, this is driven by the views in /app/views, which are basically the bare minimum to get the compiled React to appear.
In the middle: An API
The React front end is fed by an API that Rails serves. The routes are specified in the /app/controllers directory. Specifically, dynamically-generated routes are specified in /config/routes.rb. The /api/info route is probably most interesting as it drives the main React app. This route refers specifically to the /app/controllers/api/info_controller.rb controller. Note that that file is a very thin wrapper around the ScheduleProcessor's headway_info function, which is specified in /app/models/schedule_processor.rb, simply returning a JSON of the results.
Supported external services
The cron job to update route statuses is also capable of tweeting a list of delayed routes every 10 minutes. Make sure the env variables TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN, TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET, TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY, TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET are populated.
Slack
/app/controllers/api/slack_controller.rb handles the API endpoints used to serve the goodservice.io Slack App, found here. The API pulls from Redis the JSON compiled by the cron job and transforms into a JSON structure that Slack can use. SLACK_CLIENT_ID and SLACK_CLIENT_SECRET env variables are required to allow installation of the app on to a Slack workspace. The env variable SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET is needed to process Slack API requests.
Dead Man's Snitch
Dead Man's Switch integration is supported to allow monitoring of the cron jobs being run. Ensure the env variables DEADMANSSNITCH_API_KEY and DEADMANSSNITCH_TOKEN are populated.
Google Analytics
The React frontend app uses react-router module to change browser's URL in the single-page app, so the app detects URL changes and sends the new URL to GA. Events that don't change the URL (i.e. certain modals and tabs, and Slack app events) are also sent to GA as events. Currently, the GA ID is hardcoded.
Other resources
Open Source Agenda Badge
