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

[Itworx4me]

Hello JJR512,

I have tried it many ways and it still doesn't work. Thanks for trying.

[PhoenixBB]

Does anyone know if the database has to be initialized or something first? It's the first time I braved the mysql and everything went fine, no errors or anything. So I'm kinda peeved that it does nothing when I want to change settings or get a detailed forecast. The user settings thing in the database remain empty.

It's even rendering perfectly in NS4 which is a minor miracle. Unfortunately nobody wants to look at New York weather all the time so unless they can have their own cities it is making queries on the database for no real purpose.

I can't believe nobody knows the answer to this. What is it trying to call when it goes to change settings/get detailed forecast? Maybe I've missed something. If I knew what it was trying to call it might help me track it down. Is there anything I can do to the weather.php itself to make it do it's stuff??

I installed Fireflys /Me hack the night before installing this (with no problems) - could that be interfering??

Something has to be making the sessionhash not do it's job for this one particular file. But what?

Anybody?

[JJR512]

Again, the sessionhash has nothing to do with it. You can make the sessionhash appear in the URL if you really want to by disabling cookies in your profile, logging out, and logging back in again.

When you click the link to modify settings, it activates the modifysettings action in weather.php, which uses the weather_settings template. If you have all the templates installed, and the file weather.php uploaded to your forums directory, it should work. You can test it on an unhacked-version (no other hacks, no portals, no nothing) of vBulletin. If it works there, but doesn't work on your version with the portal add-on, then there must be some conflict with that, and again, that's not something I can help with.

[PhoenixBB]

Ok, it's official. I am indeed a moron! :P

It was the templates - main, select etc. Ya see I opened them in CoffeCupFTP's window and pasted them into the template like that. But the first one I'd opened was the 'redirect' and that was only one line, so when I opened the others I could only see up to the header - there was a lot of space before the tables. Never occured to me to scroll down to see if there was anymore to it. Everytime it called the weather_main or weather_select, there was only the headers there. Duh! I've just pasted the full versions in there and everything looks gorgeous and works perfectly.

So thank you for this, I'm thrilled with it. And next time somebody complains that something doesn't work and you have no idea why, bear in mind they have probably missed the blindingly obvious.

Oh and the fella who wants it on his VBIndex page.....I can't tell you how to get it in the blocks, that's beyond me, but I got a template that'll fit your portal. It works on VBPLite, so should work on yours. Look at my portal and you'll see it blends in. I've left out the humidity and barometer stuff, they can get that from the detailed forecast, but it's easy enough to add in. The template is aligned to the right, but all you'd have to do is align it to the left if you prefer that. If you want the table as it is on the original hack, that'll work too - you'd just put the variable before the centre blocks load. I think.

As the man said, put your code on the page that calls VBIndex. I've put it on the vbplite.php (which I'd renamed to portal). It goes in the same place as you'd put it in the index.php - before it called your portal page. Mine is called 'P_home'. Dunno what VBIndex calls them, but just put it before it calls that template. Then put the $currentweather variable after the 'start themeleftcolumn' or 'rightcolumn' (or vbindex equivalent) in that template and it'll put it there. Should imagine if you want the original box with the hack, you'd put it before or after the centre block. Trial and error mate! If I could figure it out - and hey idiot here! - then you will. Persevere!

[PhoenixBB]

Here's a riddle.....

When I'm logged in I get either 42 or 43 queries on the page. When I'm logged out I get 47 or 51!!

/me is very puzzled

[Kars10]

@ JJR!
Thanks, i did it so.
But i don?t get the weatherinfo.
I put youre hole code in the home.php directly for that line you say. I edit that line to fit my new template with the weather-Info for Home.php. The template called home_left_weather.
But the weather didn?t appear.... I placed the $currentweather in the home_left template.
Is there anything that must be done?
[high]* Minifreunde get nervous if something like that happend... [/high]

[scottct1]

I have the weather being shown on both my home.php and my index.php page.

On my home.php page I added the forecast to the home_logout template this way only registered users see the weather.

I needed to add the code which I added to the index.php to my home.php file.

It works like a charm and my users love it.

You can see for yourself at
http://www.dbstalk.com/home.php
and
http://www.dbstlak.com/index.php

Enjoy!

[Erwin]

My users are flabbergasted that their small little country towns are listed!

[ExAvIoUr]

it worked perfectly. no problems.

[w596]

A W E S O M E!!!

Easy to install and it works great.

This hack Rocks!

Thank You JJR512