Dynamic travel time

[darrene]

To my non-developer brain this requirement seems like a small step, however common sense tells me that’s unlikely to be the case.

If I already use a Google maps API (or Bing for that matter) to display my commute time to work which is calculated from the start and end points provided in my config.js, how could I go about making the destination point dynamic, based on the date?

My thinking is along the lines of;
if = weekend, destination = town
if = week, destination = work

this would need to be a variable that’s injected or more likely, logic hard-coded into the travel helper I guess?

[mochman]

There are a couple ways I can think of. The easiest one, that wouldn’t require recoding the traffic module would be to have 2 config.js files. One with the destination of town, and the other, work. You could set up a small bash script to switch the files and restart the mirror. You could then put that script in your crontab that runs it at the beginning of the weekend and then at the beginning of the week.

A more lengthy way would be to have your traffic module take an array of origins/destinations/weekdays and then use it’s internal programming to display the correct commute.

Another lengthy way would be to have the traffic module use a notificationReceived() with the payload being a origin/destination and then you creating another module that passes that info at a certain date/time.

I’m sure there are may other ways this can be done, but those are the ones that come to mind.

[darrene]

Thanks for the suggestions @mochman - I didn’t even think about a crontab and restart approach - it’s a sledgehammer but would get the job done whilst I figure out how to implement one of the other options (or plead for someone to do it) :)

The separate co-ordinator module approach using a payload notification feels like a really good solution - that could be fed the results of the calendar refresh, generate the destination payload and push it to the traffic module - in effect, negating the need for the traffic module updateinterval.

[yawns]

Maybe you can use the scheduler module, add your map module two times with different locations and schedule for workdays and weekend

[darrene]

Ooo! Good thinking @yawns - that’d possibly reduce a bunch of coding down to a bit of tweaking. I’ll investigate this option first. Thank you.

[MichMich]

For what it’s worth: I’ll be working on a change to the default calendar module this week to broadcast the events to other modules, including any location data. This way any module that want’s to show data based on the calendar can use the calendar data.

Keep an eye on the forum about any announcements. And check out the develop branch for new features like this.

[darrene]

Fabulous! Thanks for the heads-up @MichMich - it’s the rate of development of your mirror by everyone, that makes it so awesome.

I’ll stay tuned to the announcements

[MichMich]

@darrene It’s available in the develop branch now. Happy coding!

[darrene]

Woo! Excellent stuff. Thank you @MichMich - I’ll give it a test-drive over the weekend and feed anything constructive back

[darrene]

So having realised the simplest approach to a week/weekend commute display would simply be to code the date information into MM-Traffic’s MMM-Traffic.js file, I’ve added the following logic to the getParams function;

getParams: function() {
var params = '?';

-> var d = new Date();
-> var n = d.getDay();

    params += 'mode=' + this.config.mode;
    params += '&origin=' + this.config.origin;

-> if (n < 6) {params += ‘&destination=’ + “Cheltenham”;}
-> else {params += ‘&destination=’ + “Gloucester”;}

    params += '&key=' + this.config.api_key;
    params += '&traffic_model=' + this.config.traffic_model;
    params += '&language=' + this.config.language;
    return params;
},

Which works like a dream :) My first bit of javascript. I’m so excited!

I’d like to round it off by adjusting the
‘current commute is’
and
'origin to destination displays to be along the lines of ‘Work Commute’/‘Town Commute’ and ‘Home to Work’/‘Home to town’ but I’m struggling to find how to inject the logic.

I can see the current commute is in the defaults and symbols section. Ideally I want to change the defaults section.

The other is in the //routename section, but again I can’t work out how to make the alteration.