Simplifying Travel Planning with Python and the Expedia API: A Hands-on Guide with Code Examples

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Planning a trip can be a daunting task, but with the help of a travel planning app, the process can be made much easier and efficient. In this blog post, we will be building a simple travel planning app using Python and the Expedia API, providing code examples to show how it’s done.

The app will have a user interface that allows users to search for hotels, flights and car rentals by destination, check prices and availability, and make bookings. The Expedia API provides access to a wide range of travel content including hotels, flights, cars, and activities.

To start, we’ll first install the requests package using pip:

pip install requests

Next, we’ll import the package and set up the API key:

import requests
api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY"

We can now use the Expedia API to search for hotels and flights. For example, we can use the hotel/v3/search endpoint to search for hotels in New York City:

url = "https://offersvc.expedia.com/offers/v2/getOffers?scenario=deal-finder&page=foo&uid=foo&productType=Hotel"
querystring = {"destinationName":"New York City","minTripStartDate":"2022-10-01","maxTripStartDate":"2022-10-31","minStarRating":"1.0","maxStarRating":"5.0","page":"1"}
response = requests.request("GET", url, params=querystring, headers=headers)
print(response.text)

The above code will return a json object containing a list of hotels matching the search criteria and their details such as name, address, star rating, and price.

We can also use the flight/v2/search endpoint to search for flights and retrieve information such as departure and arrival times, prices and available seats.

url = "https://apim.expedia.com/x/mflights/search"
querystring = {"origin":"SFO","destination":"NYC","departureDate":"2022-10-01","returnDate":"2022-10-31","travelerCount":"1"}
response = requests.request("GET", url, params=querystring, headers=headers)
print(response.text)

#The above code will return a json object containing a list of flights matching the search criteria, such as departure and arrival times, prices, and available seats.
#To make bookings, the app will use the `booking/create` endpoint. This endpoint allows users to book hotels, flights, cars, and activities in one request. 


url = "https://book.api.ean.com/ean-services/rs/hotel/v3/res"
payload = {"hotelId":"123456","arrivalDate":"2022-10-01","departureDate":"2022-10-31","room1":"2","supplierType":"E"}
headers = {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    'ApiKey': api_key
    }
response = requests.request("POST", url, json = payload, headers=headers)
print(response.text)

This will return a json object containing the booking details such as confirmation number, price, and cancellation policy.

In conclusion, this simple travel planning app demonstrates how the Expedia API can be used to retrieve travel information and make bookings. With the help of Python and the Expedia API, it is relatively simple to create an app that makes the process of planning a trip much easier and efficient. The code examples provided in this post give a clear idea of how to set up the basic structure of the app, how to retrieve and manipulate data, and how to make bookings using the Expedia API.

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