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OCTranspoLive: A live OCTranspo GPS bus location application for ...

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1.2.3 <strong>OCTranspo</strong> Developer API<strong>OCTranspo</strong> on March 22nd, 2012 opened its <strong>live</strong> <strong>GPS</strong> <strong>bus</strong> <strong>location</strong> API to developers.I registered <strong>for</strong> an API key and registered <strong><strong>OCTranspo</strong>Live</strong> as an <strong>application</strong> using myaccount. The API uses HTTP requests and responses as the data de<strong>live</strong>ry mechanism.The responses are returned as XML[3]. This is less than ideal and JSON would haveprovided a much better data <strong>for</strong>mat. JSON is an easier data <strong>for</strong>mat to work withconsidering libraries are already built-in to Android and the key-value structure makesnavigating a response much simpler. One can register <strong>for</strong> an OC Transpo Live NextBus Arrival Data Feed API key at http://www.octranspo1.com/developers.1.2.4 MySQL DatabaseMySQL is a very popular relational database management system (RDBMS). Thismeans it includes not only the database itself but all the management tools.Forthis project a database was needed to allow me make queries on the data providedby <strong>OCTranspo</strong>. The data itself is several les of plain text and not very useful onits own. It is the database of choice <strong>for</strong> a new generation of <strong>application</strong>s built onthe LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP / Perl / Python)[4], and as I hadexperience installing and managing MySQL installation it was an ideal choice.1.2.5 Google Maps APIGoogle provides their Map library <strong>for</strong> use on the Android plat<strong>for</strong>m. Using the AndroidSDK Manager in Eclipse Google Apps <strong>for</strong> Android can be downloaded allowing accessto the Maps library. When congure this allows us to use com.google.android.maps.MapViewin layouts. This is used in the MapViewActivity which is detailed in a later section.Using the Maps library we can then draw custom overlays on top of a map. This is10

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