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DESIGN OF MOBILE-BASED TRAVEL E-TICKETING USING QR-CODE

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 DESIGN OF MOBILE-BASED TRAVEL E-TICKTING USING QR-CODE

DESIGN OF MOBILE-BASED TRAVEL E-TICKETING USING QR-CODE

Dugga Sunday Wara Abdulakeem Aliyu

Computer Science Department, School of Computer Science and Information
College of Education Akwanga Technology
Nasarawa, Nigeria Linton University, Mantin, Malaysia
e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract— This study is an attempt at optimizing web contents displaying of webpages. This is particularly important in a
that run on mobile devices in an m-commerce environment. It developing country like Nigeria, where often times the
provides the design and implementation of a ticketless mobile network connection is slow, and thereby rendering
web-based travel booking system deliverable via QR-Code. The ineffective delivery of the full desktop version on a mobile
paper implements webpages accessible through mobile device device and the user-experience could become poor.
browser. The site will have travel schedules for all the company The proliferations of smartphones and technological
buses and also online booking system that would allow customers advancement have made m-commerce popular. Given the
to electronically buy tickets with valid debit/credit card and mobile above context and taking into consideration that the current
device with access to the internet.
report by the Nigerian Communications Commission shows
a substantial growth of teledensity from 96.08% in 2014 to
Keywords: E-Ticketing; Ticketless; Mobile; QR-code;
107.61% in 2015 indicating that access to mobile phone
M-commerce; Web-based booking. services is on the increase (Nigerian Communications
Commission, 2015). This forms the yardstick for a mobile
INTRODUCTION
web-based booking system that commuters would rely on for
travels.
The use of technology has become an integral part of This web application is a mobile-based system that
today’s new global economy. The rapid development of the allows prospective customers enquire information about the
internet in recent years, and couple with the introduction of company and make bookings possible via the web in general
Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) in and through Smartphones in particular.
business environment world over have been on the rise in Therefore, this paper implements mobile-based e-
terms of web presence. In Nigeria, this development has led ticketing travel system on webpages via mobile device
to a dramatic growth of internet-depended business activities browser. The site will have travel schedules for all the
in the likes of mobile banking and electronic commerce company buses and also online booking system that would
being handled on mobile devices. These impacts no doubt allow customers buy tickets using online payment platform.
have been on the rise and may continue to do so in decades A number of caveats need to be noted regarding the present
to come. study. Firstly, all commuters must have a valid debit/credit
As this trend is being explored to its full potential; card and then the online booking system will require mobile
expectedly, e-commerce will also have more positive device with access to the internet.
impacts on the developing economy as compared with the
developed ones due to the fact that efficiency and the need E-TICKETING
for enhancing productivity are to a great extent required An electronic ticket (e-ticket) as described by Mezghani
Constantinescu (2011). (2008) is a “transport payment system that is based on the
The conventional means of buying travel bus tickets has
use of information and communication technologies” and
always been through paper tickets. That means a lot of
tedious tasks are involved in administering and managing the Vives-Guasch, et al. (2012) refers to an e-ticket as a
ticketing procedure. The transportation industry has since “contract, in digital format, between the user and the service
introduced electronic booking and ticketing system which provider…” which could also provide for the authentication
has not only ease in the purchase of tickets and have the and verification of commuters. An e-ticket is considered as
associated itineraries sent to customer’s mobile devices but being ticketless when large sum of information is
result in short processing time and simplification of the electronically coded and delivered over a tiny area. This
overall process (Hu, et al. 2010 and Rivers, 2009). Given the ensures that commuters travel without the need to carry a
above benefits, it is predictable that the use of mobile printout ticket.
devices in business will continue to be on the increase.
Traditionally, web-content were being delivered to
mobile devices in an incompatible desktop format which the
resultant effect is delay - slow speed in accessing and
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Proceeding of the Second Annual Research Conference of Federal University Lafia. Nigeria, February 3 rd -4th 2016

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 DESIGN OF MOBILE-BASED TRAVEL E-TICKTING USING QR-CODE

Ticketing Media
There are various ticketing media and are categorized in
Liu, et al. (2007) to include:
 Cash
 Tokens
 Paper tickets
 Magnetic strip ticket
 Contact-based smartcards
 Contactless cards
Similarly, the researcher augured that mobile devices are
also media through which ticket (QR codes) could be
rendered. Mobile ticketing using QR code as a form of
electronic code offers an opportunity for users to connect to Figure 1.2 The Structure of QR code
the physical and virtual content and create the means for (Source: Rivers ,2009)
accessing mobile services.
QR Codes Advantages of QR codes
A QR code as an invention of a Japanese company, Denso
Wave, it is a 2-dimensional matrix code that was originally The advantages that QR codes have over other technologies
used in tracking manufactured vehicle parts for almost two were gleaned from the works done by Liu, et al. (2007),
decades now. In recent years, it essentially provides a cheap Falas, and Hossein (2007), and Kao, et al. (2011) are stated
means used to encode information such as URLs, e-mail below:
addresses, texts, product images among others (Law & So,  An Inexpensive printer can be used to print QR
2010). barcodes and placed on object as compared with
printing RFID tags which requires a special purpose
The main benefit of QR codes is in its ease of use. All that device to do that.
a user needs to do is launch a QR reader app on a mobile  Ability to store large amount of information as
device, point at the code and scan and either gets to display compared NFC and RIFD.
the encoded information to the user or simple directs users  It can be read QR code reader using camera phones
to the encoded information such as websites, email address, which is difficult to achieve that with RIFD which
floor map of the store showing the product location etc. require specialized scanners.
(Wara and Dugga, 2014). It is believed that QR code’s
 It has high error correction and detection capacity.
cheap and easy-to-use features have made it attractive to
 It has high encryption and decryption speed and does
businesses. The size of QR code is relatively flexible and do
that with high reliability.
not have to depend on the amount of data stored. Mobile
tagging based on QR codes or similar approaches also offer  By using Smartphone’s QR scanner, data entry can be
done without using the phone’s numeric keypad. This
techniques to increase the accessibility of mobile services
is suitable for the transfer data from the physical world
[2].
into electronic devices.

LITERATURE REVIEW
A number of key areas that pertain to this work that
other researchers have previously carried out shall be looked
at and the approaches used in carryout these studies in
relation to e-ticketing and m-ticketing. When looking
electronic ticketing, there are a few scholarly works that
contribute heavily to it. An m-business and payment system
for making flight reservation using Afrijet as their case
study in Nigerian was proposed in Olaniyi, et al. (2010) and
will arguably improve the delivery of flight service to
customers and has the potential of changing airlines manual
Figure 1.1 An example of QR code business approach to being electronic.

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 DESIGN OF MOBILE-BASED TRAVEL E-TICKTING USING QR-CODE

In his work, Hunt (2010) has make the case for Factors for Mobilized Web
adopting a one dynamical e-ticket called the universal pass Compared with web based application, mobile based
capable of being used and reused to gain access to different application faces more challenges from both wireless devices
events such as buying movies tickets, buying tickets and and networks service.
booking travel ticket as against the one-ticket for one event  Energy consumption: running desktop web pages on
at a time. This pass system he indicated has the benefit of mobile phones takes time and by implication sapped a lot
making a cashless event happen reducing the threat possess of energy from the battery. Various reasons could be
by theft by helping event organisers keep little or no money attributed to the delay in accessing web pages on mobile
at hand. By way of comparison the work of Olaniyi, et.al devices as compared to a desktop PC. The CPU speed
(2010) and Hunt (2010) looked at a means of secure buying limitation and scheduling has been a concern in Zhu &
and delivering e-tickets to customer. However, providing a Reddi (2013) where they proposed a model for efficient
universal pass could be difficult as it requires that all energy mobile web browsing. This is an obvious point,
organizations wishing to use the universal pass must adopt but it’s surprising how few retailers have mobile
the same standard across all platforms for the system to optimised sites. In fact, it’s estimated that 80% of brands
effectively work. do not have mobile sites.
Network bandwidth: So long the mobile infrastructures
E-commerce and M-commerce are not built to meet user's perceived internet speed, there
Aside Olaniyi, et.al (2010) attempt at implementing an has to be a means to reduce wireless bandwidth
electronic booking and e-ticketing system there it was in the consumption by mobile phones. One way of doing this is
transportation industry in Nigeria in the past. Most of which the need to tailor and effectively delivered to or displayed
these studies are in mobile reservation and payment system. web content on mobile browsers.
A large proportion of these systems are only compatible to Benefits of Mobile Commerce
run on PCs. This provides a means for business information
to be electronically and wireless exchanged data in a The perceived value of m-commerce has been linked to
paperless form. the benefits customers derived from using mobile devices
Typically, mobile commerce (m-commerce) on the other which include service personalization, flexibility, and
hand is an electronic transaction performed on mobile localization. It adds value and thus creates greater levels of
handheld gadgets which can be accessed at any time and convenience.
from any location (Varshney & Vetter, 2002), (Wu, & Wang, Due to the diversity and proliferation of mobile devices it
2005) and (Saidi & Mgt, 2010). is practically impossible to write a single version of a mobile
application that can run on all devices. Mobile web becomes
adopts the browser approaches to deliver mobile content as
Barriers to E-commerce in Developing World mobile browser are equipped with browsing tool capability
In order to find out what factors militates against e- for users to access the internet. Similarly, Peng (2010)
commerce in general, a recent review study by maintains that it should be used to deliver “smaller and
Constantinescu (2011) indicates that “lack of trust in online lighter, easy to develop, deploy and good user experience” to
users. Thus it can be employed to render optimized web
payment and the security of personal information” will
content to promote users’ browsing experience.
continue to play a major factor for some years to come
unless trust and credibility are built into it. Thus it explains
why consumers appear reluctant in using e-commerce. Some Common Challenges of Mobile Web Browsers
Mobilizing the web The challenges mobile web is faced with is similar to that
of the desktop version in terms the computational
Mobilizing the web refers to the process of making web capability, time it takes to load a web page is slow except
pages accessible on mobile devices with ease. Buyukkokten for the constraint on the computational resources for
et al. (2002) used summarization algorithm for web page mobile devices are limited, the inadequacy of it cell to hold
conversion to be displayed on a handheld device. While end- power for a long time and the network traffic cost is high
users expect the delivery of web pages in timely on manner (Wang et al. (2013). These challenges will continue for a
in both desktop and mobile. Econsultancy (2013, p.8) while until they are taken care of.
emphasized the fact that “differing performance levels by The cost of accessing network can be regulated by the
device and variable mobile internet connections, it's even government after the mobile internet providers must have
more important to minimize page weight.” This informs the recovered their initial investment. However, that is still at
fundamental objective of this research. large as the considerable cost could be reduced by design
website with optimized contents which will facilitate fast
loading of web pages.

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 DESIGN OF MOBILE-BASED TRAVEL E-TICKTING USING QR-CODE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ensure timely delivery of the system to users. Some UMLs
The Agile Unified Process (AUP) design methodology for the proposed system are given in figure 1.3 and figure 1.4
consisting of the iterative process - inception, elaboration,
construction, and transition was adopted in this research to

Figure 1.3 Use Case diagram of the proposed system.

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 DESIGN OF MOBILE-BASED TRAVEL E-TICKTING USING QR-CODE

 Web server
The Apache web server was chosen because it is an
opened source web server, and is compatible with
Windows OS.

Ticket Details Embedded in QR code

While figure 1.5 depicts the QR-code displayed with the
travel ticket embedded itineraries. The customer needs to
present this QR-code and be scanned before boarding the
bus at the point of departure. A link for the QR-code
ticket information is emailed to user after booking and
payment has been successful.

Figure 1.4 Class diagram for bus booking system (Admin and
Customer).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The highlight of the programming language and tools
used for the system development are given herein. A
client side depended application with computation
FIGURE 1.5: QR CODES
abilities can impeccably combine with data centres to
produce great application.
 Authentication of Ticket
 Client- Side Scripting Language
HTML5, Cascading Style Sheets and jQuery (JavaScript Figure 1.6 is a display of e-ticket containing passengers’
library) were used to develop the client-side architecture travel itineraries displayed as read by the QR code reader
because of their support for rapid web development and in for ticket authenticity. This is what makes the electronic
order to have a system that work seamlessly across a wide ticket “ticketless” in some way.
variety of popular mobile device platforms.
SYSTEM TESTING AND EVALUATION
 Server-Side Scripting Language
To ensure that the program meet the functional
The Hypertext Processor (PHP) is a popular general-
requirements of the system and its design specifications, a
purpose scripting language most suitable for web
series of tests were carried. The system evaluation phase
development. It’s ultimately a pre-processor that execute
in essence is desirable for ensuring that the program
PHP commands in a text file and output the desired
function correctly before the final system is deployed in
HTML file on a web browser. PHP codes are executed on
full.
the Web server computer whereas some scripting
languages like JavaScript require at least a client to run.
PHP also, integrates Ticket code HTML5 -UI framework
which makes sites accessible on all popular Smartphone,
tablets and desktop devices.
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