Dynamic Weather Picture

s_ash13

I was wondering if there is any way to have a php script (to be written latter) interpret a different webpage and display certain information accordingly.

I am thinking of designing a site in which the main picture will represent the weather. So when it is sunny where I live, it will display a sunny picture, etc. etc. The site that I'm looking at getting the information from is the Yahoo Weather site (http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USWA0422.html)
or other similar.

Thanks

tommynanda

yeah... you can do that with fopen() and some string functions in PHP

s_ash13

thanks, that worked great...now all I have to do is get a list of all the types of possible weather

TheDefender

HamWeather (hamweather.com) is a script already built, or if you want to undertake it it yourself, you'd have better fun, and more learning, by pulling the info directly from The National Weather Service website. This link goes to their raw data files... (I have geeked out and written a script that parses their file for my home state, the state where my family lives, and that of where my wife's family lives.) It was a fun project, a bit tough to learn, and whatnot, but fun...

Incidentally, my inspiration came from the BoyGenius Weather XML Feeds site.

s_ash13

Thanks. I ended up writing my own script to find the data since all I really wanted was the text description of the weather (sunny, overcast, etc). I didn't want all the technical stuff.

That Boy Genius site was good since it listed that weather types that I was looking for.

Here is the script that I wrote:

<?
$page = "http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/forecasts/WAZ034.php?warncounty=WAC063&city=Spokane";
	$handle = fopen($page, "r");

$toFind = '<td class="big" width="120" align="center">';
$flag = false;

while (!feof($handle) && $flag != true)
{
	$line = trim(fgets($handle, 4096));
	if (left($line, 43) == $toFind)
	{
		$trueLine = $line;
		$flag = true;
	}
}

$betaLine = substr($trueLine, 43);

$pos = strpos($betaLine, '<');
print "\n";
$currentWeather = left($betaLine, $pos);
echo $currentWeather;
?>
<?
function left ($str, $howManyCharsFromLeft)
{
  return substr ($str, 0, $howManyCharsFromLeft);
}
?>

It works great but any comments on how to better it would be helpful.

TheDefender

Personally I would go to the raw data, and parse the TXT file... (which was what I did personally). If some code on the website you are polling changes, it could screw up the script you wrote.

Not saying my way is better, just giving you something to think about. It's a little more work to parse the raw txt file, but it is consistent in structure from hour to hour, and makes things easier in the long run.

s_ash13

I'll try that but I'll have to get a different list in order to interpret the weather desriptions in the raw format.

Thanks

s_ash13

Ok...I got it to get the data from the raw format but I'm getting stuck on cities with a space in their name.

Is there a good way to get around this or should I just have an offset value to get past the space in the name?

Here is my revision as of now:

	$page = "http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/raw/as/asus46.ksew.rwr.wa.txt";
	$handle = fopen($page, "r");

//$toFind = 'SPOKANE FELTS';
$toFind = 'PASCO';
$flag = false;

while (!feof($handle) && $flag != true)
{
	$line = trim(fgets($handle, 4096));
	if (left($line, strlen($toFind)) == $toFind)
	{
		$trueLine = $line;
		$flag = true;
	}
}
echo $trueLine;
print "<br>\n";

$pos = strpos($trueLine, ' ');
$betaLine = trim(substr($trueLine, $pos));
$pos2 = strpos($betaLine, ' ');
$currentWeather = left($betaLine, $pos2);
print '$trueLine = ' . $trueLine . "<br>\n";
print '$betaLine = ' . $betaLine . "<br>\n";
print '$pos = ' . $pos . "<br>\n";
print '$pos2 = ' . $pos2 . "<br>\n";
print '$currentWeather = ' . $currentWeather . "<br>\n";

TheDefender

This is the code I used to generate my XML files... You should hopefully be able to see what's going on, and mod it to suit your needs...... I usually post variables to make the XML for the specific state, but I pulled it all out, and hardcoded the state so you can see what it's doing. As far as the cities are concerned, I struggled with this a bit oo, so I just made an array of expected cities, and left it at that.

Also, I know there are easier ways to do some of the things I have done, but this worked for me, so it's what I got...