[Free] FlightAware Schedule Puller

phpVMS Legacy Add-Ons (v2/v5) Releases
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Hey, I noticed that the “demand” for this thing seems to be quite “high”.

I created a tool that pulls data from flightaware’s api and stores them into a csv file which phpvms can accept

There is still plenty to do (I need to add so you can quickly change airline to pull data from).

You need to create an account at fligthtaware and then change the variables in the index.php file, then you’re good to go!

 

How does it work? Well, unlike some other services, it doesn’t use AirlineFlightSchedules query in the api since that is a paid service, we want to keep it completely free.

It uses AirportBoards and then adds the parameter of only including the airline you want and then takes the data which is looked after (airline code, flightnumber, tailnumber etc) and prints them out into tables and into one big csv file. It takes only arriving and departing aircrafts, since when doing scheduled ones, missing info was inserted.

Since it’s using AirportBoards, that means that you have to run this script every day for a week on all the hubs (don’t worry, you can change which airport to capture data from) to capture all the data.

 

You can check and contribute to the project at my github

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Update:

 

Added so you can index by airline

Next update will remove the AM/PM tags  

1 Like
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Update:

 

  • Removed AM/PM tags, now it’s easier to import to phpvms!

Next update will have total flight time 

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Update:

 

-Forgot to convert AM/PM to 24hr, fixed

  • Includes total flight time

 

Next update will check if there is a route filed and print that to the table and csv file. Possibly going to add the same thing for the altitude, but I am not sure if I should to it flight level or just pure altitude. Maybe I’ll integrate a checkbox for that

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but how to install it?

Great thing to have, Thanks for your hard work

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I need an API key, that one I must buy from flightaware?

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40 minutes ago, ncd200 said:

but how to install it?

Great thing to have, Thanks for your hard work

You don’t install it on phpvms (although you can, but I am not going to sit and write a tutorial on that :p), you run it and get a schedule.csv which you can import to phpvms.

Right now, it doesn’t get all the schedules, you need to run at a couple of times and whatnot but I am working on it

 

As for the api key, you can create a flightaware account, then go to this (https://flightaware.com/commercial/flightxml/key) link and then copy credentials to the php file

 

Thanks for trying it out

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Been a long time since I looked at FlightAware. Their new pricing structure looks a lot more reasonable than what they had last time. Have you considered doing a chron job to get the schedules for the most popular airlines?

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22 minutes ago, magicflyer said:

Been a long time since I looked at FlightAware. Their new pricing structure looks a lot more reasonable than what they had last time. Have you considered doing a chron job to get the schedules for the most popular airlines?

I have considered it, but it’s not the best solution (if a code already exists, it’s going to append it twice which isn’t good).

This isn’t my top priority, but it’s up there.

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but it is not free as you sugegsted?

When I open the lin k you provided i must fill in a form with creditcard information to buy the key.

 

Rick

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46 minutes ago, ncd200 said:

but it is not free as you sugegsted?

When I open the lin k you provided i must fill in a form with creditcard information to buy the key.

 

Rick

Could be wrong link, my bad  http://flightaware.com/commercial/flightxml/ scroll down to get api key (you get 500 queries free)

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Also then i am redirected to the page where i need to pay

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Just now, ncd200 said:

Also then i am redirected to the page where i need to pay

Well, have you created an account, verified email and logged in?

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yes, i did

 

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I’m using something like that.
I created my own php script and i run it with a cronjob.

It keeps my schedule databse up to date and I grab data from Flightaware totally free.

Basically, the scrip go to 

 $ch = curl\_init("http://flightaware.com/live/fleet/".$code."?;offset=".($i\*40)."&sort=ASC;order=actualdeparturetime");

$code is defined by whatever you want ( WJA-JBU-AAL-DAL…)

The script is connected directly with your phpvms database so it updates/upload all datas in there.

If flight does not exist = it creates
If flight exist = check for update
if exist and up to date = do nothing

and also, if flight do not receive any update for x days, then delete it

So you understand here that my schedule is always up to date and synchroinized with flightaware
 

I’m pretty proud of it because i’m not a php expert and I’m working on it for one year lol
I used flightaware API before but I found out a way to get data for free…

1 Like
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28 minutes ago, ncd200 said:

yes, i did

 

https://uk.flightaware.com/commercial/flightxml/signup.rvt?product_type=1 wrong link (again, sorry :p)

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1 minute ago, elfrost said:

I’m using something like that.
I created my own php script and i run it with a cronjob.

It keeps my schedule databse up to date and I grab data from Flightaware totally free.

Basically, the scrip go to 

$ch = curl_init(“http://flightaware.com/live/fleet/“.$code.”?;offset=“.($i\*40).”&sort=ASC;order=actualdeparturetime”);

$code is defined by whatever you want ( WJA-JBU-AAL-DAL…)

The script is connected directly with your phpvms database so it updates/upload all datas in there.

If flight does not exist = it creates
If flight exist = check for update
if exist and up to date = do nothing

and also, if flight do not receive any update for x days, then delete it

So you understand here that my schedule is always up to date and synchroinized with flightaware
 

I’m pretty proud of it because i’m not a php expert and I’m working on it for one year lol
I used flightaware API before but I found out a way to get data for free…

Looks and sounds awesome! I see what you did there without using the api  (I’m not even mad that’s impressive).

This is just a project I did to learn to work with api’s and curl in php, but it’s pretty cool what you can do!

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4 minutes ago, RamiAbouZahra said:

Looks and sounds awesome! I see what you did there without using the api  (I’m not even mad that’s impressive).

This is just a project I did to learn to work with api’s and curl in php, but it’s pretty cool what you can do!

pretty cool indeed

Here a code I have written long time ago and I do not use anymore. not sure if it still working
 

\<?php $options = array( 'trace' =\> true, 'exceptions' =\> 0, 'login' =\> '', 'password' =\> '' ); $client = new SoapClient('http://flightxml.flightaware.com/soap/FlightXML2/wsdl', $options); $params = array( 'fleet' =\> 'WJA', 'howMany' =\> 15, 'offset' =\> 0, 'maxDepartureAge' =\> '3 days', 'maxFileAge' =\>'5 days' ); $data = array(); $output = fopen('php://output', 'w'); $result = $client-\>FleetScheduled($params); $result1 = $client-\>RoutesBetweenAirportsEx($params); $i = 0; $data = array(); foreach ($result-\>FleetScheduledResult-\>scheduled as $flightObj) foreach ($result1-\>RoutesBetweenAirportsExResult-\>data as $flightObj) { $data[] = $flightObj; $i++; $origdestarr[]=$flightObj-\>origin."\_".$flightObj-\>destination; } if (is\_soap\_fault($result)) { echo 'ERROR: ' . $result-\>getMessage() . "\n"; die(); } function objectToArray($d) { if (is\_object($d)) { // Gets the properties of the given object // with get\_object\_vars function $d = get\_object\_vars($d); } if (is\_array($d)) { /\* \* Return array converted to object \* Using \_\_FUNCTION\_\_ (Magic constant) \* for recursive call \*/ return array\_map(\_\_FUNCTION\_\_, $d); } else { // Return array return $d; } } $my = objectToArray($data); function array2csv(array &$array) { if (count($array) == 0) { return null; } ob\_start(); $df = fopen("php://output", 'w'); fputcsv($df, array\_keys(reset($array))); foreach ($array as $row) { fputcsv($df, $row); } fclose($df); return ob\_get\_clean(); } function download\_send\_headers($filename) { // disable caching $now = gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s"); header("Expires: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 06:00:00 GMT"); header("Cache-Control: max-age=0, no-cache, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate"); header("Last-Modified: {$now} GMT"); // force download header("Content-Type: application/force-download"); header("Content-Type: application/octet-stream"); header("Content-Type: application/download"); // disposition / encoding on response body header("Content-Disposition: attachment;filename={$filename}"); header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary"); } date\_default\_timezone\_set("UTC"); download\_send\_headers("data\_export\_WJA\_" . date("Y-m-d") . ".csv"); echo array2csv($my); die(); ?\>

 

1 Like
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5 minutes ago, elfrost said:

pretty cool indeed

Here a code I have written long time ago and I do not use anymore. not sure if it still working
 

 

Quickly skimmed through it, afaik, flightxml2 is deprecated :confused: But hey! Conversion to flightxm3 is possible  Just a bit curious how using “w” worked out, did it overwrite entries in the csv file? That’s what happened when I used it, I could only get the last data in the array so I used option “a” instead which worked  

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honestly, i did not use for long time so maybe i would get some issues.
but it could be a good starting point I guess or another way to grab those datas

1 Like