Ryanscanner

Inspiration

Travelling around Europe this summer, I noticed it was often cheaper to fly to an intermediate destination and then on again on a low-cost-carrier when the fare direct was often more expensive and on a full service airline.

What it does

In particular, Ryanscanner uses Ryanair's dense point-to-point network, but scans other large LCCs in turn if that doens't yield any results.

How I built it

Using the Skyscanner API (great sponsor), and PHP (sorry).

Challenges I ran into

So it turns out the Skyscanner API isn't friends with Ryanair, although these are displayed on their site, which was disappointing as this is not documented. Ryanair's route structure was a large inspiration for the project. However, the company seems to have a progressive attitude to tech, so hopefully this will be resolved in the future.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Working with the Skyscanner API! I've never been the guy on the project dealing with an API this complex and so it was good fun getting to grips with it.

What I learned

I improved my workflow by using Postman for a lot of the testing phases. I decided to do the project in PHP instead of Python as it's a language I've used longer (and I think I appreciated this in the middle of the night..) but next time I'd like to move to Python.

What's next for Ryanscanner

I'd like to match up connecting flights better, and present them in a sorted list. I'd also like to be able to select airports more intelligently, as this would improve loading time.

Built With

• php