Tim Hibbard

Working with WeatherBug API

I talked earlier about integrating WeatherBug data into Where's Tim. Chris Sloop has been a lot of help and was even nice enough to include Where's Tim on the WeatherBug's API example page. He requested that I share some code, so here it is:

Basically, to consume WeatherBug's API, I:
1) Make a call to the Where's Tim webservice
2) Parse the zipcode out of the .Place property of the GPSData structure
3) Pass the zipcode into a function that builds the REST url
4) Load the url into a System.Data.DataSet using the .ReadXML function
5) Pass that DataSet into my WeatherInfo structure that takes a DataSet as a constructor

Code to get location and parse zipcode:

Public Function GetTimsWeather() As WeatherInfo
    Try
      Dim CurData As GPSData = GetTimsLocation()
      Dim ZipCode As String = CurData.Place.Remove(0, CurData.Place.Length - 5)
      Return GetWBInfo(ZipCode)
   Catch ex As Exception
      Return Nothing
   End Try
End Function

Private Function GetWBInfo(ByVal ZipCode As String) As WeatherInfo
   Try
      Dim url As String = "http://[myCode].api.wxbug.net/getlivecompactweather.aspx?acode=[myCode]&zipcode=" & ZipCode
      Dim DS As New System.Data.DataSet
      DS.ReadXml(url)
      Dim RV As New WeatherInfo(DS, ZipCode)
      Return RV
   Catch ex As Exception
      Return Nothing
   End Try
End Function

Public Sub New(ByVal DS As System.Data.DataSet, ByVal ZipCode As String)
   Try
      _temp = DS.Tables("temp").Rows(0).Item("temp_Text")
      _rain = DS.Tables("rain-today").Rows(0).Item("rain-today_Text")
      _wind = DS.Tables("wind-speed").Rows(0).Item("wind-speed_Text")
      _winddirection = DS.Tables("weather").Rows(0).Item("wind-direction")
      _zipcode = ZipCode
      _weblink = "http://web.live.weatherbug.com/Common/home.aspx?zip=" & _zipcode
   Catch ex As Exception
   End Try
End Sub

Print | posted on Friday, January 13, 2006 7:51 AM | Filed Under [ .NET Where's Tim ]