transitdb is powered by all sorts of things

TransitDB is composed of an eclectic mix of different technologies working together. This is a shoutout to all the projects and technologies that made TransitDB possible. Lots of name dropping and (justified) buzzwords — watch out!

The frontend website uses PHP and IIS7. The transit info database uses Microsoft SQL Server 2008, which has the necessary spatial data support. Python scripts handle some background tasks. All of this runs on a Windows Server 2008 VPS hosted by Rackforce.

The website uses jQuery, jQuery UI, Ajax, JSON, Raphael JS, and Google Maps to enable all the dynamic client-side UI work. TransitDB is location-aware, using both IP geolocation and the W3C geolocation spec. The application follows the MVC pattern, with the Dwoo templating system handling the 'view' component. The components are also decoupled, so parts can be delegated to other systems if the application needs to be scaled up.

One of the original purposes of the TransitDB project was for me to learn Python, as I thought that it would be an educational experience, and doubly rewarding. All the transit data scraping, parsing, and various processing into usable formats was done in Python, using a lot of different contributed modules. These modules include, in no particular order, BeautifulSoup, pytz, PyRSS2Gen, geopy, Shapely, MySQLdb, and pymssql. There's probably more that I've missed!

As the project grows, even more technologies will play a role.