vB Weather Mk. 2

This is a post of a much-revised hack originally posted (by myself) here. I am posting this as a new hack because MSNBC, who the raw weather data is provided through, has changed their source provider (from AccuWeather to The Weather Channel), which required a retooling of the data parsing code, as well as completely new databases. I have also made obsolete the weather_functions.php file, moving the functions to admin/functions.php, simplifying the ability to show current weather data on any page (if desired). Finally, in what I'm sure will be welcome news to many people who have installed the original, I've completely rewritten the instructions, making them, as far as I can tell, much simpler.

If you are unfamiliar with the original: This hack provides current weather conditions and a five-day forecast to your members. Each member can select from over 34,000 cities, by narrowing down from region (like continents), country, and subdivision (like states). Each member can also select to see temperatures in Fahrenheit or Celsius, as well as metric or standard measurements for the other data.

A demo is available on my test board: http://www.jjr512.com/testboard/. I have set up an account for anyone to use to test it out (username: test; pw: test). If you are not logged in, you will see default weather on the home page (default is set to New York City), and cannot change settings (I forget if you can view a detailed forecast, though; you may be able to). If you do log in, you can change the settings for the test account, to see how it works.

***
If you have installed any previous version, you should completely uninstall it. Read the instructions and work backwards from there: Delete all templates added, remove changes to any existing templates (I forget if there were any or not), delete all new tables from the database, delete all new files added by the old hack. All have been changed to some extent, some more than others, and it would be easier to work from a clean slate. Especially since some of the template names have changes, so if you don't delete the old ones, they'll just be sitting there doing nothing at all. It is also vitally important to delete (or "drop") the tables--I believe there were six--you added for the original version. The new ones have different data and, for some, a different structure, so do not just empty them. Remove them totally.

Good luck!

Change Log
v1.1a: Current Version: Corrects a small error where an incorrect variable was used in the code to show the local time of the last update. If you already have v1.1, you only need to do the fix described in Post #82 below.
v1.1: Changes display of last update time to be the correct time in the user's own local time zone; previously, it was always Eastern Time (GMT-5) (Upgrade instructions are in Post #79 below). Also breaks the weather_city.sql into six smaller pieces (useful only to new installations; existing installations need not worry about this).
v1.0a: Adds instructions on how to add location to current weather on forums home page (changes to code added to index.php and forumhome_weather template).
v1.0: Original Release

[Tony DiMera]

I forgot to mention, I use Barrie, Ontario, Canada and Midhurst, Ontario, Canada and it does it with both.

[mackers8923]

Great

I must say it took me a while to get there but now she is going no problem. Thanks for a great hack.

One question though! How do I move the weather information from the top of my forums page to the bottom below the current users online?

Cheers

Rob

[mackers8923]

Before I go, How would I go about adding a box on my home page: www.sccportal.org.uk to show the same information in a smaller format?

Any help at all would be great

[mv540]

need some help here, first off this is a sweet hack....installed it with ease...but there is only 1 problem...for example certain areas like barrie Canada doesnt show a gif for the current weather conditions..ive inserted a sample of what i mean....

as you can see the link leads to //.gif....and in the file there is no such picture....is this normal or did i install something wrong...?

[indiamike]

Originally posted by mv540
.but there is only 1 problem...for example certain areas like barrie Canada doesnt show a gif for the current weather conditions..ive inserted a sample of what i mean....

as you can see the link leads to //.gif....and in the file there is no such picture....is this normal or did i install something wrong...?

This is normal. Just means that the feed has no image applied to it. Unfortunately there is no way to name a gif to just .gif to fill in the blank.

Just the way the feed is....wouldn't worry about it.

Mike

[mv540]

Thank you for the reply Mike. ill change it to something closer like toronto or something..lol


cheers!

[PennylessZ28]

Dang you know hwo tricky it was to get this to work with VBindex, whew!

Awesome man!

[Erwin]

Originally posted by indiamike


This is normal. Just means that the feed has no image applied to it. Unfortunately there is no way to name a gif to just .gif to fill in the blank.

Actually, you CAN name a transparent gif to .gif and upload it. It'll work.

Better yet, use the .gif file I uploaded somewhere in this thread that tells users when the weather server is offline.

[jjj0923]

for those of you who are sick of timeouts from www.msnbc.com - just change the code from www.msnbc.com to their IP address and you won't have any more connection timeouts.

I know if they change their IP address you're SOL, but at least your page doesn't site there waiting for the connection to msnbc to timeout any longer.

since I made the change it works great I have not had a single timeout error.

[cirisme]

I am just curious if anyone has put this into a cron script?

I want to use this, but I don't want it to slow down my pages while it retrieves the weather.