Gautrain app developer access blocked
Developers of Gautrain applications are up in arms after AfriGIS disabled public, unencrypted access to the live Gautrain bus tracking feed.
The feed, or application programming interface (API), lets developers access the current positions of Gautrain buses and, for example, use the data to plot the buses on a map.
Grant Slater, who developed a small web app that uses the API, expressed his disappointment on Twitter and received a response from AfriGIS.
“The decision was made by the GMA in conjunction with AfriGIS,” AfriGIS said. “We are working with the Gautrain Management Agency (GMA) to try & establish a commercial model.”
AfriGIS locked down Gautrain bus API
Slater said that the API is now encrypted and served via HTTPS, and requires an encrypted one-time key per request. He and other developers were not informed about the change before it took effect last month (August 2014).
“Getting past the encryption would be a fun challenge, but quickly becomes a cat-and-mouse game I’d best like to avoid,” Slater said.
Popular third-party Gautrain applications such as GTBuddy were also affected by the change.
However, GTBuddy recently informed its users that it had “sorted out the bus tracking issue with AfriGIS and Gautrain”.
Asked for comment, GTBuddy declined to say anything further about the matter.
AfriGIS was asked why there was a need for a commercial model for the API, and what that commercial model would look like.
It said that our questions had been referred to the GMA, but no further feedback was received from either AfriGIS or the GMA.
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