db-iris - Commandline Client for DB IRIS Departure Monitor

db-iris is a commandline client and Perl module for the DB IRIS departure monitor located at iris.noncd.db.de. See the Travel::Status::DE::IRIS homepage for details.

It provides both human- and machine-readable access to departure data at german train stations via text and JSON output.

Installation

You have four installation options:

Nightly .deb builds for Debian-based distributions
Installing the latest release from CPAN
Installation from source
Using a Docker image

Except for Docker, db-iris is available in your PATH after installation. You can run db-iris --version to verify this. Documentation is available via man db-iris.

Nightly Builds for Debian

lib.finalrewind.org/deb provides Debian packages of both development and release versions. Note that these are not part of the official Debian repository and are not covered by its quality assurance process.

To install the latest release, run:

wget https://lib.finalrewind.org/deb/libtravel-status-de-iris-perl_latest_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i libtravel-status-de-iris-perl_latest_all.deb
sudo apt --fix-broken install
rm libtravel-status-de-iris-perl_latest_all.deb

For a (possibly broken) development snapshot of the Git master branch, run:

wget https://lib.finalrewind.org/deb/libtravel-status-de-iris-perl_dev_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i libtravel-status-de-iris-perl_dev_all.deb
sudo apt --fix-broken install
rm libtravel-status-de-iris-perl_dev_all.deb

Note that dpkg, unlike apt, does not automatically install missing dependencies. If a dependency is not satisfied yet, dpkg -i will complain about unmet dependencies and bail out. apt --fix-broken install installs these dependencies and also silently finishes the Travel::Status::DE::IRIS installation.

Uninstallation works as usual:

sudo apt remove libtravel-status-de-iris-perl

Installation from CPAN

Travel::Status::DE::IRIS releases are published on the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) and can be installed using standard Perl module tools such as cpanminus.

Before proceeding, ensure that you have standard build tools (i.e. make, pkg-config and a C compiler) installed. You will also need the following libraries with development headers:

libdb
libssl
libxml2
zlib

Now, use a tool of your choice to install the module. Minimum working example:

cpanm Travel::Status::DE::IRIS

If you run this as root, it will install script and module to /usr/local by default.

Installation from Source

In this variant, you must ensure availability of dependencies by yourself. You may use carton or cpanminus with the provided Build.PL, Module::Build's installdeps command, or rely on the Perl modules packaged by your distribution. On Debian 10+, all dependencies are available from the package repository.

To check whether dependencies are satisfied, run:

perl Build.PL

If it complains about "... is not installed" or "ERRORS/WARNINGS FOUND IN PREREQUISITES", it is missing dependencies.

Once all dependencies are satisfied, use Module::Build to build, test and install the module. Testing is optional -- you may skip the "Build test" step if you like.

If you downloaded a release tarball, proceed as follows:

./Build
./Build test
sudo ./Build install

If you are using the Git repository, use the following commands:

./Build
./Build manifest
./Build test
sudo ./Build install

If you do not have superuser rights or do not want to perform a system-wide installation, you may leave out Build install and use db-iris from the current working directory instead.

With carton:

carton exec db-iris --version

Otherwise (also works with carton):

perl -Ilocal/lib/perl5 -Ilib bin/db-iris --version

Running db-iris via Docker

A db-iris image is available on Docker Hub. It is intended for testing purposes: due to the latencies involved in spawning a container for each db-iris invocation, and the lack of persistent caching, it is less convenient for day-to-day usage.

Installation:

docker pull derfnull/db-iris:latest

Use it by prefixing db-iris commands with docker run --rm derfnull/db-iris:latest, like so:

docker run --rm derfnull/db-iris:latest --version

Documentation is not available in this image. Please refer to the online db-iris manual instead.

Managing stations

Travel::Status::DE::IRIS needs a list of train stations to operate, which is located in share/stations.json. There are two recommended editing methods.

Automatic method, e.g. to incorporate changes from Open Data sources:

modify stations.json with a script in any JSON-aware language you like
run ./json2json in the share diretcory. This performs consistency checks and transforms stations.json into its canonical format, which simplifies tracking of changes and reduces diff size

Manual method:

run ./json2csv in the share directory
modify stations.csv automatically or manually (e.g. with LibreOffice Calc)
run ./csv2json in the share directory

If the changes you made are suitable for inclusion in Travel::Status::DE::IRIS, please open a pull request afterwards.

Please only include stations which are usable with DB IRIS, that is, which have both DS100 and EVA numbers. If

curl -s https://iris.noncd.db.de/iris-tts/timetable/station/EVANUMBER

and

curl -s https://iris.noncd.db.de/iris-tts/timetable/station/DS100

return a <station> element with "name", "eva" and "ds100" attributes, you're good to go.

Note that although EVA numbers are often identical with UIC station IDs, this is not always the case. Please do not rely on UIC IDs when managing stations.