How to Show Airport and Flight Information

This guide shows you four ways to get departures and arrivals onto your screens, from the simplest to the most flexible:

Way	Use it when	Effort
1. Public XML or JSON feed	The airport or aviation authority publishes a free feed	Low
2. Authenticated API, through a workflow tool	The flight data API needs OAuth2, or you want to combine several sources	Medium
3. Web scraper datasource	The airport shows a flight board on its website but has no API	Low
4. AI datasource	Nothing structured exists, or you want to combine flights with other data	Low, but less reliable

Whichever way you choose, the result is a datasource that you bind to a Table Widget or to your own flight-board layout.

1. Public XML or JSON feed

Many airports and aviation authorities publish flight data for free. For example, Avinor, the operator of Norway's airports, publishes departures and arrivals as an XML feed. ❓ Check the current feed address and terms of use on Avinor's partner site before you give a customer the URL.

1. Create an XML datasource (or JSON, if the feed returns JSON) and paste the feed address.
2. Set a refresh interval that matches how often the board should update.
3. Bind the flights list to a Table Widget.

Wallboard converts XML to JSON automatically, so you bind XML data the same way as JSON data.

Look for a national feed

Many national authorities and air navigation services publish similar feeds. ❓ Availability differs by country; check for the target country before you plan the project.

Learn more: XML datasource

2. Authenticated APIs, through a workflow tool

Most professional flight data APIs need credentials. They use one of three common methods:

Method	How it works	In Wallboard
API key	One secret string, sent in a header or in the URL	Supported: add it as a header under Custom headers (advanced), or in the URL
Basic auth	A username and password	Supported: Authentication (Basic auth)
OAuth2	Exchange a client ID and secret for a short-lived token, then send the token with every request	Not built into JSON or XML datasources: use a workflow tool in between

Both headers and Basic auth are in the datasource's Connection settings.

Cloud Credentials

Cloud Credentials handle sign-in for the integrations Wallboard has built in, such as Google, Microsoft and Power BI. They do not apply to a JSON or XML datasource pointed at another provider's API.

Using a workflow tool such as n8n

A workflow automation tool, such as n8n, lets you chain steps visually: an HTTP request, a data transformation, a condition. For flight data, a workflow can:

1. Start when Wallboard calls the workflow's webhook address, with parameters such as the airport code, the direction (departures or arrivals) and the time window.
2. Get an OAuth2 token from the flight data provider, and call its API.
3. Optionally call a second provider, and add airline logos or full airport names.
4. Merge the results and return one clean JSON response.

In Wallboard, you then create a JSON datasource with the workflow's webhook address. Wallboard sees one simple feed; the workflow handles the authentication and the combining.

❓ Example provider: the OpenSky Network (community flight tracking) uses OAuth2 client credentials; anonymous access is heavily rate-limited. Confirm on their site before using it as an example.

Learn more: JSON datasource

3. Web scraper datasource

If the airport publishes a flight board on its website but offers no API, point a Web scraper datasource at the page. Wallboard loads the page in a browser (so pages built with JavaScript work), then AI extracts the data you describe.

Field	What to enter
Webpage to extract from	The address of the departures page
Page load wait time (seconds)	How long to wait after the page loads before extracting: 5 to 20 seconds, default 5. Use a higher value for pages that load flights slowly
Tell AI what to extract (prompt)	For example: Extract flight number, airline, destination, status and scheduled time from the departure board
Output format	Let AI choose format (automatic), Provide example structure (JSON), or Use data template (JSONSchema). Give an example or a schema to keep the structure stable, so your bindings do not break

❓ If Web scraper is not offered as a datasource type, it may be hidden by your user interface profile; ask your administrator.

Learn more: Web scraper datasource

4. AI datasource

The AI datasource is a system datasource. You give it a prompt, and optionally one or more Source datasources to work from. It can also use built-in tools, set under Tool Configuration: web search (Grok or Gemini), URL Fetch, Image Analysis, X (Twitter) Search, Google Maps and Image Generation. Each tool can be ON (used if needed), OFF, or FORCE (always used).

Example prompt:

Search the web for departures from Budapest airport in the next 3 hours. Return flight number, destination, airline, scheduled time and status as JSON.

The AI datasource is less reliable than a real flight API, because it depends on what it finds. It works best for combining data, for example weather and flights, or a calendar and flights, or as a fallback where no structured source exists.

AI usage limits

The Web scraper and the AI datasource use AI, which is counted per customer as an hourly and a monthly usage budget. When a customer reaches the budget, refreshes are blocked until the next hour or month. ❓ The exact budget depends on whose AI key the server uses; ask Wallboard for your server's figures before promising a refresh rate.

Plan the refresh interval with this in mind: a flight board refreshing every minute uses far more of the budget than one refreshing every 15 minutes.

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