FAFlightID received by push does not exactly match what was registered

FlightAware AeroAPI
1

Sometimes, the FAFlighID we receive by a call to our flight alert receiver does not exactly match the FAFlightID we used when setting the alert.

For example:
A few days before the flight, we create the alert via:
eg
ident = “QFA400”
departureTime = 1507143600
faFlightId = FlightXML2Soap.GetFlightID(ident, departureTime)

This returns “QFA400-1506970800-schedule-0004”.
We register the alert with
FlightXML2Soap.SetAlert(0, faFlightId, null, null, null, 0, 0, "{16 e_departure e_arrival e_diverted e_cancelled}", true, 1000);

Sometime later, we receive a call to our alert receiver, with
faFlightID = "QFA400-1506970800-schedule-0004:1"

Now we can’t figure out which of our users to deliver the alert to, because we have no record of this flight id (because of the extra “:1”)

Full example response:

{"long_desc":"Qantas #400 arrived at Sydney (SYD) at 07:17AM AEDT from Melbourne Tullamarine (MEL)\n\nDestination (Sydney / SYD): Terminal 3, Gate 4","short_desc":"QFA400 arrived at SYD from MEL","summary":"QFA400 arrived at SYD from MEL","eventcode":"arrival","alert_id":22849145,"flight":{"ident":"QFA400","aircrafttype":"A332","origin":"YMML","destination":"YSSY","filed_ete":"00:48:00","route":"DCT DOSEL Y59 RIVET","faFlightID":"QFA400-1506970800-schedule-0004:1","reg":"VHEBE","filed_altitude":410,"filed_airspeed_kts":458,"filed_time":1507140963,"filed_departuretime":1507143600,"estimatedarrivaltime":1507148247,"actualarrivaltime":1507148247,"actualdeparturetime":1507144380,"estimated_blockin_time":1507148460,"filed_blockin_time":1507148700,"actual_blockin_time":0,"estimated_blockout_time":1507143600,"filed_blockout_time":1507143600,"actual_blockout_time":1507143720,"filed_arrivaltime":1507146480}}

2

I had to add a rule to my data parser specifically to remove the extra :1, :2, :3… etc. from the end of FlightAware’s flight ID’s. I never figured out exactly what the pattern was, but, it was consistent for a few different flights (as in, some specific flights would always trigger the :x issue).

In any event, I’ve seen it too; it’s a bug that should be corrected on FlightAware’s end, but, should be something you can handle on your end too - just check to see if the second from last char in the ID is a “:”, if it is, truncate the last two chars of the ID and move along.

3

OK, thanks. Good to know this strategy is working for others

4

Apparently we are not returning the base flight id when sending alerts. The :1, :2, etc represent different forks of a flight that are created based on different permissions. I think we’re going to update the alert engine to strip off the fork and return the base_id only.

1 Like
5

@ottergoose:
Thanks that is good to know!

I guess updating the alert engine means V3?