About

KnowledgeBase is RDG’s Content Management System providing customer friendly information on the railways and associated products. KnowledgeBase data is available on National Rail Data Portal through 2 subscription types

Real Time Data Feeds – for new, modified and deleted Incidents
On Demand Data Feeds – for requesting the latest information on the following
- Ticket Restrictions
- Companies
- Incidents
- National Service Indicator
- Promotions (Public)
- Stations
- Ticket Types

Accessing the KnowledgeBase Feeds

To access the RDG KnowledgeBase feeds, you must have an account on the National Rail Data Portal (NRDP) at http://datafeeds.nationalrail.co.uk. After logging in, you will see 3 subscription types: Historical Service Performance (HSP), Real Time Data Feeds and On Demand Data Feeds. By selecting the checkbox for each of these subscription types, the respective sections become visible on the My Feeds page.

The previous Darwin Data Feed on the NRDP Account page has been replaced by the Real Time Data Feed which once selected include details about the Darwin push-port feeds and the KnowledgeBase – Real Time Incident feed in the My Feeds page.

To receive KnowledgeBase Real Time Incidents, select Real Time Data Feeds under Subscription Type in the Edit User Details page and then select the Update button to save this change. Go to the My Feeds page and select the KnowledgeBase data type – Real Time Incidents option. You will need the Real Time Information /STOMP details to start receiving real time incident messages via a STOMP client.

The On Demand Data Feeds section on the My Feeds page contains details about accessing the latest versions of Ticket Restrictions, Companies, Incidents, National Service Indicator, Promotions (Public), Stations and Ticket Types files from KnowledgeBase. To receive these KnowledgeBase files, select the On Demand Data Feeds checkbox under the Subscription type in the Edit User Details page and then select the update button to save this change.

RDG KnowledgeBase APIs

On Demand Data Feeds

After selecting the On Demand checkbox subscription type on NRDP, you can receive the KnowlegeBase xml files in 2 steps via a rest client.

Step 1: Perform HTTP POST call to NRDP via https://datafeeds.nationalrail.co.uk/authenticate to generate a token.
Step 2: Perform HTTP GET call to individual NRDP Knowledgebase Feeds using the token produced in step 1

Step 1: Generate Token

In this step, using a REST client you perform an HTTP POST call to https://datafeeds.nationalrail.co.uk/authenticate. This step requires using your email address and password registered on NRDP and will produce a token key. The following example shows the HTTP POST request and response with NRDP:

Example HTTP POST Request to NRDP:

  POST https://datafeeds.nationalrail.co.uk/authenticate HTTP/1.1
  Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
  Accept: application/json, text/plain, */*
  Raw payload: username=user1@gmail.com&password=P@55w0rd1
  //Add your registered NRDP email address and NRDP password in the “Raw payload” section above

Corresponding example HTTP Response from NRDP:

{
"username": " user1@gmail.com ",
"roles": {
"Role(id=6ab28d46-0e4a-11e7-9339-060a84373309, name='ROLE_KB_USER')": true,
"Role(id=47d36dc4-16b9-11e6-9746-060a84373309, name='ROLE_HSP_USER')": true,
"Role(id=4e660138-bb39-11e4-9da1-060a84373309, name='ROLE_D3_USER')": true
},
"token": " user1@gmail.com:1491312310772:56c56baa3e56d35ff0ede4a6aad1bcfb"
}

Each token is valid for 1 hour and you will receive a 401 unauthorized response when the token has expired. The following http response example is generated after sending an http request to a NRDP knowledgebase feed with an expired token.

Example HTTP 401 Response Header: Token Expired:

Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, max-age=0, must-revalidate
Content-Language: en
Content-Length: 1081
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2017 09:52:11 GMT
Expires: 0
Pragma: no-cache
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-Frame-Options: DENY
X-Xss-Protection: 1; mode=block

Corresponding example HTML Response file: Token Expired:

<html>
<head>
<title>Apache Tomcat/7.0.56 - Error report</title>
<style>
</style> </head>
<body>

HTTP Status 401 - Unauthorized: Authentication token was either missing or invalid.

type Status report

message Unauthorized: Authentication token was either missing or invalid.

description This request requires HTTP authentication.

Apache Tomcat/7.0.56

</body>
</html>