{"id":109510,"date":"2014-09-09T13:13:20","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T11:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=109510"},"modified":"2014-09-09T13:22:53","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T11:22:53","slug":"gautrain-app-developer-access-blocked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/109510-gautrain-app-developer-access-blocked.html","title":{"rendered":"Gautrain app developer access blocked"},"content":{"rendered":"

Developers of Gautrain applications are up in arms after AfriGIS disabled public, unencrypted access to the live Gautrain bus tracking feed.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Grant Slater, who developed a small web app that uses the API, expressed his disappointment on Twitter and received a response from AfriGIS.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision was made by the GMA in conjunction with AfriGIS,\u201d AfriGIS said. \u201cWe are working with the Gautrain Management Agency (GMA) to try & establish a commercial model.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AfriGIS<\/a>

AfriGIS locked down Gautrain bus API<\/p><\/div>\n

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).<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting past the encryption would be a fun challenge, but quickly becomes a cat-and-mouse game I\u2019d best like to avoid,\u201d Slater said.<\/p>\n

Popular third-party Gautrain applications such as GTBuddy were also affected by the change.<\/p>\n

However, GTBuddy recently informed its users that it had \u201csorted out the bus tracking issue with AfriGIS and Gautrain\u201d.<\/p>\n

Asked for comment, GTBuddy declined to say anything further about the matter.<\/p>\n

AfriGIS was asked why there was a need for a commercial model for the API, and what that commercial model would look like.<\/p>\n

It said that our questions had been referred to the GMA, but no further feedback was received from either AfriGIS or the GMA.<\/p>\n

More Gautrain and developer articles<\/h3>\n

Gautrain SMS alerts run by NXT\\ Digital Innovation<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN Business SA Apps of the Year winners<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(where GTBuddy won an award)<\/p>\n

iTunes vs Google Play vs Windows Phone Marketplace vs BlackBerry in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Gautrain Management Agency and AfriGIS have decided to block third parties from using the Gautrain bus position tracking feed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":79033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[26714,8231,26716,26720,26718,35],"class_list":["post-109510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-afrigis","tag-gautrain","tag-gautrain-management-agency-gma","tag-grant-slater","tag-gtbuddy","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109510"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109516,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109510\/revisions\/109516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}