How to parse Amadeus air ticket file
Amadeus produces AIR file like below for every flight reservation. I need to read reservation number and source and destination airports from this file.
I searched Google for "Amadeus air format" but haven't found format description. Wikipedia entry about EDIFACt is a bit different, it does not describe this content.
Where to find information about the file structure ? How to parse this file ? I have not idea about the file structure, does it contain records like SQL table or is it some reservation protocol instructions like postscript file ?
Application should work in Microsoft Windows and preferably in Visual FoxPro or C# language. FoxPro or Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Express can used as programming environment
Google returns only Amadeus users guides and tutorials like in comment and in
http://www.amadeusschweiz.com/en/documentation/usermanuals.html
Those are user manuals. Most promising looks Amadeus Air user guide from this:
File which I received name was air.txt and first token in file is AIR-BLK206 Maybe BLK206 is some booking format descriptor. Google returns some documens like my using this so it looks like it is commonly used.
This file probably describes how to reserve ticket, which produces air.txt file.
I seacrched this and ticket user guide for BLK but those do not contains this abbreviation.
Commands in user manual look different than those from this file. How to use this information to extract reservation number and destination airport from this file ? I haven't found format description using Google. There are Amadeus user guides, tutorials and quick reference files similar which you posted but I don't understand how to use them to parse this file.
One message describes that this is form of EDIFACT. However EDIFACT message sample in Wikipedia is also different. I need to create quick prototype to customer which shows that we vćan read those files.
Maybe there are some programs which can used to display it in human readable form ?
Answer
You should consider contacting your local Amadeus Support for help regarding this. They offer excellent documentation around pretty much everything you need to know.
I'm 100% sure that what you're looking at not actually is EDIFACT. EDIFACT is very much delimited with pluses (+) and semicolon (;).
The example actually looks a lot more like a screen capture from the Amadeus Selling Platform with spaces replaced by semicolon(;). It's most likely a file in the Amadeus Interface Record format.
Also, parsing this file require you to know a great deal about how the Amadeus GDS works. And that's not very easy. A flight booking might seem like a trivial thing but it's a very complex world made up of strange ways to handle things.
Here is the product documentations (not including specifications) http://www.amadeus.com/travelagencies/x52025.html
Consider looking for your local sales office at http://www.amadeus.com/