Driving the Journey Planner from a browser address bar
 

I made reference to this in the thread "stay on or get off?"
It seemed more sensible to write it up as a separate thread.

At http://www.britishmuseum.org/visiting/getting_here.aspx, you can
see a form to use the Journey Planner to get to the British Museum.

I did so, wondered how it was done, and did some probing.

I find that the following shows travel now from Stepney Green to Aldgate
East:
http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/use...anguage=en&exe
cInst=&sessionID=0&ptOptionsActive=-1&place_origin=London&name_origin=ste
pney%20green&type_origin=stop&place_destination=Lo ndon&name_destination=a
ldgate%20east&type_destination=stop

I have found how to specify origin, destination and intermediate places.
I have found how to specify types of places.
I have not found anything more.

I have found the following:
language=en ; the default is de as the product seems to be German
execInst= ; seems needed.
sessionID=0 ; probably a default
ptOptionsActive=-1 ; just copied. I have not tried to perturb the value.

place_origin=London ; I suspect this is the only supported value
name_origin=value ; e.g. stepney%20green
type_origin=stop ; for a station or stop. locator for a postcode. address for one; poi for a point of interest.
There are corresponding *_destination and *_via fields.

When I instrumented an Internet Explorer Session, different mechanisms
were used in a Journey Planner form.

If the text inside above is referred to as x and I place
=HYPERLINK("x", "name") in Excel, the formula appears as "name".
Clicking on "name" causes an Internet Explorer session to start which
triggers a second session which shows current travel between the 2
points.

OTOH, HYPERLINK does not work from Windows Mobile Excel. ;)

Has anyone further light on this?
I have gone way beyond my competence to get as far as I have.
--
Walter Briscoe