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

[al98t]

yeah i still see sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesnt.. that kinida sucks.

[PennylessZ28]

Thank you, I have been scratching my head about this one for well over two weeks now. Lucky me I finally checked the thread out.

The fix worked, good work guys. Great to see everyone helping each other!

[lemarsu]

Hi,

Is it just me or has it stoped working for every contry except the US?

LeMarsu

[lemarsu]

:banana: :bunny:

Hey .... it is working now... been looking at it all day at work.. trying to find a work around

But now it is working again !

:banana:
LeMarsu

[Katarn]

Our members say it works for them, even internationally.

Thanks to lemarsu for the help. FYI for all those out there. You need to apply the fix to both the weather.php and index.php.

If you apply to only to weather.php you will only see the detailed weather work, and the frontpage will only work when you force update.

If you apply to only index.php, the frontpage part will only work....

If you have a portal, you need to change that as well....

[Lionel]

it stopped working for me

[jbear6]

It's working fine here, just like when originally installed. It might go down for a few minutes here and there, but that has always happened.

Jbear6

[o0stephane0o]

Big problem in deed, here is the mail I have sent to JJR512
Read carefully if you have installed the weather hack.
Hi, I really love your hack and I think it´s great but unfortunatly, I cannot make it work with Spain. I tried with the V3.0 and the v 3.01. I also tried with the VBulletin 2.29 and 2.30 but I get the same problem.
I have checked your webiste to see if it was working but it didn´t. So try to put any cities in Spain like Madrid or Barcelona. It just says they aren´t there but when you check your tables, they are all there.
And if you go to the nbc page, it does works there. Any idea of what could be the problem?
I hope you can help me with this problem because if soemone wants to ++++ around, he only has to chose Spain and you will get a SQL Error.
Quite annoying.
Hope you will have the time to answer me. If I can help, do not hesitate in contacting me.
Thanks you.

[lemarsu]

ok,

I see the problem there is no data for Spain in `weather_city` table...

LeMarsu

[lemarsu]

ok,

I compiled you some SQL that you will need to run in mySQL, this will populate `weather_city` table with all the cities in Spain and it should all work with no problems.
There are 189 cities from Agreda to Zaragoza.

LeMarsu