Check us out

Trinity Travel helps travelers see the world by finding the cheapest flights anywhere.

[trinitytravel-blog]

Finishing Touches

We made our “Trinity Travel” logo and our “Tumblr” and “Twitter” links available on all three of our pages. We placed the city selected at the top of the “City Photos” and “City Map” page to remind the user of their selection. We also allowed the user to select key words to append to the city name for a photo search. For example, if a user was interested in the city of Orlando and decided to check out some photos of it, they could select hotels from the dropdown and Orlando hotels photos will be displayed. 

[trinitytravel-blog]

Last Piece of the Puzzle

While we had a difficult time finding a flight API, finding an API for photos was much easier. There were several options available. In the end, we decided to go with the Flickr API. We are planning to use this API to get photographs of specific places in the destination city. The only thing we needed to use this API was an API key. Registering for the key was a quick and easy process. We’re looking forward to working with this API.

[trinitytravel-blog]

Tinkering With Google Maps

Upon looking deeper into Google's map API, we found some neat functionality it had to offer. Directions, distance, and drawing were some just to name a few. We thought that it'd be a good idea to show the user what the weather would be like in the city of interest. So, we proceeded with implementing a weather layer that allowed the user to either turn on/off the current weather conditions and upon an icon click show the next four day forecast. 

[trinitytravel-blog]

Trouble in Paradise

Although Google Maps API has proven to be a cool and powerful tool to provide the user with information we had a major issue with it. Most developers use the API to display on the map a local business. Due to only having one location to point out, Google only gave examples for hardcoding your latitude and longitude directly into the function. When we attempted to pass in our coordinates based on the city button click it wouldn't work. The questions on how to solve this problem is all over the web, however we could not find a single working solution. Actually, many of the forum post are never even answered. With the use of FireFox's debugger, we eventually discovered what was going wrong. The parameters were being passed in just fine. But the Google API worked by opening the page the map will be displayed on (leaving the JavaScript) then getting the data to show the map in regards to (returning to the JavaScript). We then realized once this focus shift would occur, our variables created for capturing our passed in values would clear out back to undefined. We finally found a solution to handle this problem (which we consider to be a valuable lesson) and it was to make the variable passed in persistent. We used

function storeLatLng(id, value){ window.sessionStorage.setItem(id, value);}

[trinitytravel-blog]

Other API Selections - Google Maps

Now that we've got our flight information results up and running, our next adventure is to get the map API going. The natural choice for this, and the option we decided on, is Google Maps. We are specifically taking advantage of Google Places, which allows us to display places such as hotels, restaurants, and attractions in the destination city. All we had to do was register for an API key and we were up and running. Google had great documentation for utilizing their API but navigating through it all along with understanding the code took some getting used to. We were constantly jumping between windows to make sure we were following the proper steps.

[trinitytravel-blog]

Weighing Our Options

Okay, so the flight API thing was an epic failure. Are we going to turn back now? No way!! We set out with a vision, and we are going to follow through. So, here is another way we discovered that allows a developer to pull data from an existing website. 

Option 1: Scraping

What is scraping? It’s basically a way to pull information from other web sites. It sounds simple enough, but in reality it’s not so easy. Google flights along with other sites run there viewable source code through a scrambler. This makes the code unreadable to humans and next impossible to work with for data scraping. We suppose there exist a way to still accomplish this but we didn't have the time to waste on figuring it out. 

The only alternative we could come up with now in order to proceed with the project is to fake the returned flight information. We had 2 options here.

Option 2: Database of flights

This is a good alternative, but in the end we passed on this option also. The focus of this project is on web services, not SQL queries. 

Option 3: Hard coded flights details/images

This is the option we went with. It is the easiest solution to the problem at hand and will allow us to spend more time focusing on the other APIs we're going to use. This flight API search has taken up far too many hours—it’s time to move forward.

[trinitytravel-blog]

Rome2Rio is not what we hoped for

It started out promising

We registered for the Rome2Rio API and received a unique key to attach with our GET request. The documentation that explained how to make request also seemed helpful. They also provided a auto-fill text box that would populate with any airport in the world.    

The letdown 

We discovered that Rome2Rio wasn't for just flights but for travel from any location to any location. So, the auto-fill text box would fill not only with any airport but also any city in the world. We did not want this because it could give misleading information. After searching the web for some time and coming up empty handed, we decided to build our own. This was a grueling process and took hours of copy and pasting (not fun). The code is available in case anyone should need it. Here is the link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1JQvIdwmhX2SFNSZ0d4anRaZ00/edit?usp=sharing

The next big letdown we discovered was a crucial blow. Rome2Rio didn't return prices or allow the user to specify travel dates. Although they had this functionality working on their site they didn't offer it though there API service. 

[trinitytravel-blog]

City Details UI Mock-Up

[trinitytravel-blog]

City Details UI Mock-Up

[trinitytravel-blog]

Home Page UI Mock-Up

[trinitytravel-blog]

Flight API Search

The search for a flight API has begun! After many Google searches and many hours of sifting through API’s on programmable web (a great resource for API’s), we are left with a remarkably small number of options. If you’re not a multi-national company with serious web traffic and extra cash, it turns out it’s pretty difficult to get your hands on flight information.

This is the list of API’s that made it to our final run through:

http://www.programmableweb.com/api/rome2rio

http://www.programmableweb.com/api/travelocity

http://www.programmableweb.com/api/expedia

http://www.programmableweb.com/api/skyscanner

http://www.programmableweb.com/api/cleartrip

After spending some time sifting through these options, we thought we found a winner—Skyscanner. However, we were disappointed once again. After digging further into the API documentation, we found that the API service is not free. Skyscanner does offer a free widget called “Skytools,” but that was not what we were looking for.

In the end, we settled on the only free resource we could find, Rome2Rio. It looks like this API will give us access to the flight data that we need. Hopefully, all of the time and effort spent finding this API pays off!

[trinitytravel-blog]

Plan of Attack

Exterior:

On the front end, we are aiming for a minimalist design. We are keeping our application user-friendly by using a simplistic layout that is easy for all users to understand and navigate.

Inner-workings:

The main functionality of our application is dependent on using web services provided by other sites. We will use the data we have collected from these sources to create our own service. Our application is heavily dependent on finding a flight API--it is necessary to implement the rest of our functionality. Other API’s we are planning to incorporate include a map API, a photograph API, and possibly a local event API.

[trinitytravel-blog]

Our Vision

Have you ever found yourself looking at a map and realizing how many places you’ve never been? Or maybe you are overdue for a vacation but just can’t afford those hefty flight cost? If you said yes to either of these, Trinity Travel is here to help.

Trinity Travel will be a web-based tool that helps travelers see the world by finding the cheapest flights anywhere. We are not your typical travel website, so a little explanation is in order. Here’s how it works. At TrinityTravel.com we allow a user to enter information to include a departing airport along with travel dates. There will not be an option for a destination. Here is where the fun comes in. Our key concept is that we will provide you with the cheapest flights available from the specified dates in order of ascending price. Then you can decide which place you would like to go. We understand that many of these destinations may be unfamiliar to the user. So, to shed some light on these mystery locations we point it out on the map and provide some pictures of the area along with it. Also, we know how weather can have a tremendous impact on activities while vacationing, so, a forecast for the travel dates will be provided to help you plan. If you love traveling, visiting new places, and saving money Trinity Travel has got you covered.

[trinitytravel-blog]

First Things First

When coming up with names for our company and website we starting compiling a list. Many seemed catchy however, after some word play, we came up with Tech Trinity (company) and Trinity Travel (website) and knew we had a winner. So, onto the branding. We tinkered with some online logo makers but many ended up unattractive. We eventually came across "The Logo Creator". It isn't as powerful as "Adobe Photoshop", although, its learning curve was not bad at all. And here is what we came up with.