If there is one entity that is universally used across India by every cross-section of the society to travel, it is Indian Railways. The number of people traveling on Indian Railways on daily basis is absolutely humongous. You can make that out from the fact that even with all the upgrades, IRCTC website still crawls when people try to book tickets on it. And even after IRCTC has a capacity to book 7200 tickets per minute.
Obviously, with that kind of demand, hundreds of web and mobile apps have come up to cater to travelers needs. From PNR checking, to train timings, ticket booking probability, meal bookings, all kinds of apps are available now. However, for app developers who develop apps for anything related to Indian Railways, it is a nightmare. IRCTC, being a state run organization, does not have proper APIs and developers have to look at various different ways to gather data to incorporate it in their apps.
Fortunately, it will soon become extremely easy for them going forward. eRail.in, a site dedicated to information on Indian Railways has launched free APIs in regards to all information related to Indian Railways.
eRail seems to have done the dirty work of collating all information from multiple source to create a common database of all trains running under Indian Railways.
The eRail.in Indian Railways API is a service that provides information related to Indian Railways Trains using an HTTP request. You can get all the information through eRail APIs including list of stations, trains between stations, route of a train, Train Fares, PNR Status, Live train status, seat availability, cancelled, rescheduled or diverted train information and current running status of the train.
The API is provided for non-commercial usage only for incorporating in your existing web or mobile apps.
How to Get eRail API
First and foremost, app developers will need to get an API key which
- Allows you to monitor your application’s API usage in the API console
- Enables per-key instead of per-IP-address quota limits.
- Ensures that eRail.in can contact you about your application if necessary.
The eRail.in Indian Railways API uses an API key to identify your application. API keys are managed through the eRail.in APIs console. To create your key:
- Please send a request to info@erail.in
- Upon approval you will be provided with the API key
- Once the service has been activated, you can make HTTP request to the API.
If you have an existing app or want to create a new app related to Indian Railways, go ahead and checkout http://api.erail.in. Full information is available in their website.