Documentation of the Elvis package “Wunderground”
Overview
A web service is available under https://www.wunderground.com/weather/api , which provides weather data and forecasts free of charge after registration up to a certain extent (as of July 2016: max. 500 inquiries per day, max. 10 per minute).
Update November 2018 – The Weather Company announces:
“The WU API has been around since 2010 to help you develop apps and websites as well as manage your Personal Weather Station data. During that time, we’ve watched you build amazing products and visualize weather data with creativity and purpose.
Over the years, our infrastructure has been unable to keep up with the growing numbers of users coming to us for API data. This has led to higher costs as we worked to keep the service stable and dependable. Eventually, we realized we’d need to make drastic changes or risk serious problems for our API.
As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire the Weather Underground API. The Weather Company, which acquired WU back in 2012, offers a powerful suite of enterprise-grade APIs that might be better suited to meet your scale and performance needs while offering a broader range of weather data. You can see these products here .
Here’s what you need to know going forward:
- Your subscriptions, and therefore access, will continue to work through 12/31/2018 .
- If you are a paying WU API customer , you will receive a call from a representative from The Weather Company, and IBM business, to discuss transition options to other API services. If you’d like to have these conversations sooner, contact us .
- If you are a Personal Weather Station owner , you will receive more information about our plan to offer free access to the data you provide to Weather Underground. We’ll reach out once that plan has been finalized.
- For developers who use WU API data for non-commercial purposes , you will have access to a new plan for a personal use, low call volume API. Stay tuned for more details as we build this out.
- The WU Forum will continue to be the best place to connect, keep you informed, share your feedback and get your questions answered as we go through this process.
We are grateful for your commitment to Weather Underground and appreciate your understanding and support as we work through this process. These changes will allow us to continually improve our services and develop new features to keep WU a thriving place for you for many years to come.”
Please contact our support if you need assistance in switching to another weather service.
Update August 2018 – The creation of new free API keys is no longer offered. However, existing keys will continue to work. A possible alternative is darksky.net. Ask our support if you need help with this.
For information on the exact conditions, please visit the web address provided.
Procedure
After inserting the package into the server project via the package manager (from Elvis 3.3.31), the ready-made configuration file wunderground.xml is available (see below for information on earlier Elvis versions).
The next step is to create a new data point connection in the server project: Right-click on the server project – add -> add server data ->> connection with data points. The corresponding *.elvissc file should be given a corresponding name, e.g. “Wetter.elvissc”.
Then you create a first table entry in this file by clicking on the green cross, i.e. a new port instance (here: “Wunderground”), and select the option “GenericWebClient” in the “Driver type” column. The configuration of this new port is done in the properties window:
| Configuration: | Wunderground.xml | |
| Password: | … | here you enter the API key received when you signed up |
Now you can create data points for this connection for the individual transmitted data. The configuration file already extracts the current_observation element from the response; the information contained there is documented under https://www.wunderground.com/weather/api/d/docs?d=data/conditions#response_fields :
Useful data points are, for example:
| Address | Type | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| temp_c | Real32 | Temperature in °C |
| wind_degrees | Real32 | Wind direction in ° |
| wind_kph | Real32 | Wind speed in km/h |
Note on previous Elvis versions
In Elvis versions prior to 3.3.31, use the following procedure instead of the package manager:
- Download the wunderground.xml file and right-click on the server project – Add ->> Existing item… one.
- If you select the file in Solution Explorer, set Copy to Output Directory in the Properties under Copy to Output Directory to “Copy if newer”.
