Parsing TransXChange (TXC)¶

TransXChange is the UK standard for bus timetable data. Transit Parser supports TXC schema versions 2.4 and 2.5.

Loading TXC Documents¶

From File¶

from transit_parser import TxcDocument

doc = TxcDocument.from_path("service.xml")

From String¶

xml_content = """<?xml version="1.0"?>
<TransXChange xmlns="http://www.transxchange.org.uk/" SchemaVersion="2.4">
  ...
</TransXChange>
"""

doc = TxcDocument.from_string(xml_content)

From Bytes¶

with open("service.xml", "rb") as f:
    data = f.read()

doc = TxcDocument.from_bytes(data)

Accessing Document Info¶

# Schema version
print(doc.schema_version)  # "2.4" or "2.5"

# Filename (if loaded from file)
print(doc.filename)

# Entity counts
print(f"Operators: {doc.operator_count}")
print(f"Services: {doc.service_count}")
print(f"Stops: {doc.stop_point_count}")
print(f"Journeys: {doc.vehicle_journey_count}")
print(f"Patterns: {doc.journey_pattern_section_count}")

Querying Document Data¶

# Get operator names
operators = doc.get_operator_names()
print(f"Operators: {operators}")

# Get service codes
services = doc.get_service_codes()
print(f"Services: {services}")

# Get stop codes (NaPTAN ATCOcodes)
stops = doc.get_stop_codes()
print(f"Stops: {stops}")

TXC Structure Overview¶

A TransXChange document contains:

Element	Description
Operators	Bus companies operating the services
Services	Service definitions with lines
StopPoints	Bus stops with NaPTAN references
Routes	Physical routes between stops
RouteSections	Segments of routes
JourneyPatternSections	Timing patterns
VehicleJourneys	Individual trip instances

Handling Invalid Documents¶

Transit Parser handles invalid XML gracefully:

# Invalid XML returns an empty document
doc = TxcDocument.from_string("not valid xml")
print(doc.operator_count)  # 0
print(doc.schema_version)  # ""

To check if a document loaded successfully:

doc = TxcDocument.from_path("service.xml")

if doc.operator_count == 0 and doc.service_count == 0:
    print("Warning: Document may be empty or invalid")

Next Steps¶

See TXC to GTFS Conversion to convert TXC documents to GTFS format.