README

A module to fetch Santander Cycle hire locations within a distance of specified locations. Read more on the blog.

Installation

To include this package in your project, use composer:

composer install jessicadigital/tflcycles

Fetching hire locations

To fetch locations, first create a new instance of the TflCycles class:

$tflcycles = new \JessicaDigital\TflCycles\TflCycles();

Now, specify your location(s) to find nearby hire stations:

$tflcycles->addLocation($latitude, $longitude);

You must specify one or more locations.

Next, set the search distance (in metres), e.g.

$tflcycles->setDistance(2000);

for 2km. This will find all bike hire locations within 2km of any of the specified locations. The default is 1000m.

Now, perform a search. Use the find() method to return an array of stations, or save($filename) to save this array directly to a file.

Example

This example will fetch all cycle hire stations within 500m of Euston and Waterloo rail stations and save to a file called cycles.json:

// Create object
$tflcycles = new \JessicaDigital\TflCycles\TflCycles();

// Add location - Euston Station
$tflcycles->addLocation(51.5290371, -0.1368696);

// Add location - Waterloo Station
$tflcycles->addLocation(51.5031686, -0.1144991);

// Change distance to 500m
$tflcycles->setDistance(500);

// Save the found locations to a file called cycles.json
$tflcycles->save('cycles.json');

Usage

This package uses the TfL Santander Cycle API. Please abide by their Terms and Conditions.

Do not make repeated requests to the API - the data is only updated every five minutes. The recommended approach for using this package is to set up a scheduled CRON job to fetch and cache the data you need.

This project has no connection with TfL or the bike hire scheme; it was created as part of a development project and released for the community to enjoy.