Draft & review links Pro

Hand a stakeholder a working copy of your feed before it goes live. A draft link is an unguessable, time-limited URL to a specific snapshot's GTFS ZIP — perfect for review by a colleague, a consultant, or a downstream consumer who wants to test the feed before you publish it to the world.

What it is

Publishing puts your feed at a permanent, public, catalog-registered URL. That's the wrong tool for "can you check this before it's live?" A draft link fills that gap: a private URL you can share for review, with none of the permanence or discoverability of a real publish. It serves a frozen snapshot, so what your reviewer downloads doesn't shift under them while you keep editing.

When to use it

• Sending a revised feed to a state DOT coordinator or a consultant for sign-off before publishing.
• Letting a downstream developer or trip-planner integrator test against real data ahead of go-live.
• Sharing a proposed service change internally without exposing it on your public feed URL.

How to use it in GTFS·X

1. Open the feed and go to the Share & Publish tab in the bottom panel, then the Share for review section.
2. Choose + Create draft link. GTFS·X mints a private link pinned to the current snapshot and shows two URLs — this is the only time the full URLs are displayed, so copy them now:
   • a direct ZIP download (feeds.gtfsx.com/<slug>/draft/<token>.zip) for a reviewer or a downstream consumer;
   • an open-in-editor link (gtfsx.com/import?url=…) that loads the snapshot straight into the editor for a colleague.
3. Copy whichever fits and send it. No GTFS·X account is required to download the ZIP.
4. When the review is done, revoke the link (or let it expire). Both URLs share one revocation — killing the draft link kills the open-in-editor preview too.

How it stays private

• Unguessable token. The link carries a 192-bit random token (stored hashed), so it can't be enumerated or guessed.
• Expiring & revocable. Draft links expire after 30 days and can be revoked at any time; generate a fresh one whenever you need it.
• Not indexed. Draft responses carry X-Robots-Tag: noindex and the feeds origin's robots.txt disallows /draft/, so search engines won't surface them.
• Pinned to a snapshot. Each link points at a specific saved snapshot, so the bytes are stable once shared — continuing to edit the feed doesn't change what the reviewer sees until you mint a new link.