vB Weather: Give your members current weather and forecasts!

After seeing a weather feature at the vbPortal website, and finding out that I couldn't get it for free, I determined to create it for myself, and give it away to everyone for FREE.

So here it is. It's based in part upon the original MyWeather add-on module for PHP-Nuke, which as I understand was also the basis for the add-on module for vbPortal. Anyway, I basically used the part of the PHP-Nuke module that gets the raw data and parses it into a usable format, although I reworked it some and corrected a few bugs. I wrote on my own the rest of the code which handles and displays the data, along with letting the user select his/her location (to localize the weather), number formats (like ?F or C, winds in mph or kmph, etc.), and various other little bits.

I've done as much testing on it as I can on my own, and have had it running on my own production forums for about a day now. Several people have commented that they really love the feature, that it's almost getting to the point where they don't have to go anywhere else on the Internet. I haven't heard of any complaints or problems yet, though, so I'm reasonably certain it's fit for a full release.

You can demo the hack on my message board: JJR512.com. The first part you should look at is the box that appears in the column of boxes on the left side of the home page. This box displays basic current weather info. There are two links in that box, one to see the forecast, and the other to change settings. I forget if you need to be logged in to see the forecast--it may just show you a forecast for the default location, which is Central Park, New York City, NY, USA--but you definitely need to be logged in to change settings. For the purpose of seeing this hack in action, you can login as Test User using the password testuser. Feel free to change the settings and save them, do whatever.

Installing this hack is in some ways easy, in other ways not so easy. There will only be one file modification. However, there are no specific instructions as to which file to edit or how to edit it. If you want the small weather box to show up on your forums home page, you need to edit the associated file (index.php). If you want it to show up somewhere else, then you need to edit whatever file generates the page where you want it. There is a text file in the ZIP that contains all the code, and only the code, that you need to insert into whatever file. If you prefer, you can turn that text file into a .php file (by adding <?php at the beginning and ?> at the end and renaming it to .php) and simply including it in whatever file you need it in.

You will also most likely need to edit the template that makes the weather box. It's formatted to basically make a box as it appears on my site, which is in the middle of some other boxes in a column. If you want to reformat it to appear as a long thing across the top of the page, like the various stuff at the top of the forums home page here at vbulletin.org, that's up to you. You edit the templates to match your own site.

BTW, I would appreciate it if someone better at PHP coding than myself would take a look over this and tell me if I've done everything right or not. I believe the code works and does what I want it to do, but it seems like it might be a little more complex than it needs to or should be. I guess I'm just wondering if there may have been a more efficient way to do some of the things I did. If you have any tips or advice for me, or even want to rewrite the code to show me, I'd really appreciate it.

OK, so without further ado, here's the hack in the attachment. Whatever problems you have, please post them here, and I'll try to help as best I can, but make no guarantees that I can help at all. Please remember that I write my hacks for my own site first and foremost, so they do what I need them to do, not what I think somebody else might want. I choose to release them here in case anybody else can benefit from them, but you may need some part of it to work slightly differently. If I know how to do it I will try to tell you how to do it, but I won't update the hack with every little feature variation that people ask for. In general, I only update my hacks to fix bugs and to add new features that I want or need for my site.

// Change Log]
03b: Includes necessary database change instructions.
03a: Forgot to update 03 ZIP with new templates; fixed.
03: Changed code for new icon system, added code for forecasted weather type (new part of raw data)
02: Adjusted code for new format of weather forecast raw data
01b: Fixed two missing lines from weather_include.txt
01a: Added missing template; updated instructions regarding missing template; fixed $templatesused variable in weather.php; added text file explaining how to add more cities; updated instructions regarding where to get the icons used for this hack
01: Original release

[JJR512]

If you want it on every page, I believe the easiest way to do that is to make the weather_include.txt file into a PHP file, by adding <?php at the beginning and ?> at the end, renaming the extension, then include that file in the phpinclude template, then you should be able to use $weather anywhere. (This is in theory, not tested by me.)

You can easily add more cities. This hack comes with over 1500 cities that are made available, but there are a lot, lot more. Probably just about any town that is covered by an ISP would be available, or if not then the town next to it. I have attached a text file to this post that explains how to add more cities. I have also put this file into the weather01.zip and updated the attachment in the first post; note that if you have already downloaded it, it is NOT necessary to download it again. Just download the file from the attachment in this post, because nothing else in the ZIP has changed at all.

BTW, the cities Newcastle, Newcastle On Clun, Newcastle Wea Cntr, and Newcastle Wx Centre are all available, as are Cardiff and Edinburgh.

Mark Hewitt, no, it the front page won't try to connect to MSNBC every time someone loads it. A user's weather data is stored in the database and is usable for up to two hours after it was put there; after it is more than two hours old, the hack will connect to get new data. This should minimize the amount your site has to connect to MSNBC, plus the hack itself will not have to go through the steps of parsing the raw data, etc. I have personally observed on my home computer a difference of a few seconds between when the front page uses cached data and when I force it to get new data. If you want to change how long the cached data is considered "fresh", look for this line in weather.php:

PHP Code:

if ((time()-7200)>$datecut or $forceupdate=="yes") { 


Change the number 7200 to some other number, where it is the number of seconds. (There are 3600 seconds in one hour, thus for two hours, it is 7200.) Now this hack will display, on either the box on the forums home page or on the weather forecast page, the time the data was last updated by AccuWeather. This is the time the original raw data was updated, NOT when the data was stored in your database. You can try to pay attention to that time to see how often the actual raw data is updated (I have not had time to do that yet, and I just picked two hours as a seemingly good amount of time), and adjust the number accordingly. Meaning, if the raw data is only updated every three hours, make the cached data fresh for three hours; however, you run the risk that someone will cache some data just before an update, then the raw data changes, meanwhile the user is sees old data for the next three hours.

[JJR512]

Gamingforce: D'oh! I forgot to include those. The ZIP with all the graphics is too big to attach, at 273kB, so I uploaded it to my own webserver where you can download it: <link removed by JJR512; the ZIP is now attached to Post #55 in this thread>. There will be four folders in the ZIP: iconset1, iconset2, etc. Please create a folder in your forums/images folder called "weather", and upload the four folders (including each folder's contents) there. (If you really want to put them somewhere else, you will need to edit the paths in the templates.)

I have updated the instructions.txt file for this hack to include the URL to download the images ZIP file. That is the only change; if you have already downloaded the weather01.zip, you do NOT need to download it again, because I just told you how to get the ZIP.

Note that each iconset has two additional graphics, forecast.gif and current_cond.gif, which are just graphics that say "Forecast" and "Current Conditions". I did not use these on my website, so they are not used in the templates, but they are there for you to use if you want to.

[Lesane]

Fantastic Hack JJR512. Install this one later. Well done, thanks.

[Martz]

looks good, nice work

[JJR512]

I have updated the ZIP file to include another text file, redirect_weather_updatethanks.txt, which is used for another template. I forgot about it originally. I updated the instructions to include a reference to that file. I updated the weather.php file to fill in the template names for the $templatesused variable at the top.

If you have already downloaded this hack, please download the new ZIP, upload the new weather.php file, and add a new template for redirect_weather_updatethanks. Sorry!

[qwaz]

We need to redo all the sql queries??

[qwaz]

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare convert_temp() in /home/racing-f/public_html/bbs/weather_functions.php on line 4

Getting that when cliking on Change Settings and Detailed Forecast

[JJR512]

Originally posted by qwaz
We need to redo all the sql queries??

No, just upload the new weather.php file, and add a new template for redirect_weather_updatethanks.

[JJR512]

Originally posted by qwaz
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare convert_temp() in /home/racing-f/public_html/bbs/weather_functions.php on line 4

Getting that when cliking on Change Settings and Detailed Forecast

It sounds like for some reason, the weather_functions.php file is being included/required twice. Did you turn the weather_include.txt file into a PHP file and include it in your phpinclude template? If so, the problem is probably that both the weather.php file and the weather_include.php file would try to include weather_functions.php. Try removing the line in weather.php that requires weather_functions.php and see if it works like that.


Also, in Post #11 above, I incorrectly stated to change weather_include.txt into a PHP file and include it in the headinclude template. I should have said to include it in the phpinclude template, which is at the top of the styles area.

[qwaz]

Originally posted by JJR512

It sounds like for some reason, the weather_functions.php file is being included/required twice. Did you turn the weather_include.txt file into a PHP file and include it in your phpinclude template? If so, the problem is probably that both the weather.php file and the weather_include.php file would try to include weather_functions.php. Try removing the line in weather.php that requires weather_functions.php and see if it works like that.

Ok, that's fixed, but when refreshing a page I get the below result.

I have another question...would I be possible to make it display weather for only a single city that I set it to? And not allow users to change it?