Introduction

The feedvalidator is a command line tool that checks a Google Transit Feed for problems and generates a HTML report. Running it on your transit data feed and fixing the issues that it finds can save you from display and routing problems down the road.

For a list of the errors and warnings that FeedValidator outputs, see the FeedValidatorErrorsAndWarnings page.

You may run the validator on an uncompressed directory of GTFS txt files. I recommend you validate your final google_transit.zip just before publishing it to catch any mistakes creating the zip. If you have an script that generates your GTFS file consider making validation a final step and aborting if it exits with an error.

Windows standalone version

We provide a Windows executable version for convenience; if you're running Windows, you should use this one. To get it, download the latest transitfeed-(version)-windows.zip from the project download page.

Once you have it downloaded and unzipped, there are a few ways to run it:

Easiest

Drag a GTFS zip file or directory onto feedvalidator.exe. A window will pop up with the result of the validation test:

Intermediate

Double-click feedvalidator.exe. A window will pop up and ask you to enter the location of your feed file or directory. You can type it in, or just drag a GTFS file or directory onto the window and hit Enter.

Expert

Go to the Windows command prompt, and type: feedvalidator <name of feed file or directory>. If you want to avoid the prompt at the end of the validation, use the --noprompt parameter.

Python source code version

Use this version if you're on Mac OS X or Linux.

Before you run the feed validator you must install Python. It is tested with versions 2.4 and 2.5 and should work with 2.6. You can download Python from http://www.python.org/download/

Fetch the transitfeed distribution from our source code repository (see Source tab above) or by downloading transitfeed-(version).tar.gz from the project download page.

Running

Run the feed validator as

feedvalidator.py <feed filename>

The warning "Timezone not checked (install pytz package for timezone validation)" is normal. feedvalidator can not check the spelling of the agency_timezone until you install the pytz package.

Extra help for Windows XP/2000 users

Open a new Command Prompt window. Change into the directory containing feedvalidator.py (Hint: type "cd " without quotes and drag the icon of the folder into command prompt window). Run feedvalidator.py <feed filename>. If you don't want to type the feed filename try dragging it into the command prompt window.

Command line options

 Usage: feedvalidator.py [options] [<input GTFS.zip>]
 
Validates GTFS file (or directory) <input GTFS.zip> and writes a HTML
 report of the results to validation-results.html.
 
If <input GTFS.zip> is ommited the filename is read from the console. Dragging
 a file into the console may enter the filename.
 
For more information see
 http://code.google.com/p/googletransitdatafeed/wiki/FeedValidator 
Options:
   --version             show program's version number and exit
   -h, --help            show this help message and exit
   -n, --noprompt        do not prompt for feed location or load output in
                         browser
   -o FILE, --output=FILE
                         write html output to FILE or --output=CONSOLE to print
                         all errors and warnings to the command console
   -p, --performance     output memory and time performance (Availability: Unix
   -m, --memory_db       Use in-memory sqlite db instead of a temporary file.
                         It is faster but uses more RAM.
   -d, --duplicate_trip_check
                         Check for duplicate trips which go through the same
                         stops with same service and start times
   -l LIMIT_PER_TYPE, --limit_per_type=LIMIT_PER_TYPE
                         Maximum number of errors and warnings to keep of each
                         type
   --latest_version=LATEST_VERSION
                         a version number such as 1.2.1 or None to get the
                         latest version from code.google.com. Output a warning
                         if transitfeed.py is older than this version.
   --service_gap_interval=SERVICE_GAP_INTERVAL
                         the number of consecutive days to search for with no
                         scheduled service. For each interval with no service
                         having this number of days or more a warning will be
                         issued
 

Revision History

See the TransitFeedDistribution page.