WeatherHarvest

Background

WeatherHarvest is a PHP based module/block combination that is written for PHPNuke. This BETA is early development of a weather harvesting tool that provides "value add" to your site by presenting weather conditions throughout the US. Future releases will include Canada, Europe and Austrailia.

Weather is harvested from a variety of locations, but for the initial BETA releases it is limited to the NOAA database servers. This is consistent with other popular weather tools such as HAMWeather. Future "harvesting" will come from governmental and UN based weather gathering servers throughout the world. The reason for this approach is - the data is freely available!

Weatherharvest BETA v0.7.0

What's new?

Now that I've gotten over killing databases, I've gotten down to some real data collection and a few bugs.

• Fixed parsing errors in index.php
• Added NOAA BUOY Marine Data for the WORLD! (HUGE addition, pretty cool) There is an initialization table upgrade from 0.5.0 to 0.7.0
• Added Weather Summaries - NOAA lists summaries for selected cities throughout the world. This simple routine allows you to see the collected data for those specified regions
• Added Canada to the list of weather cities. No radar yet, but it is coming!

WeatherHarvest BETA v0.5.0

What's new?

This release wasn't what it was supposed to be. Your humble (whatever) coder screwed up the database trying to do too much. I ahve spent the last 2 1/2 weeks getting it back together. There are a couple of new things that you'll want though -

• Radars have been harvested for all of the major cities. More will be added
• Fixed issues when saving INI data
• Fixed invalid math routines for temperatures below 0C or 32F
• Fixed parsing routine for temperatures below 0C or 32F and DEW Point measures that are negative

Installation Instructions

Power users - if you want to upgrade - you can! If you have successfully installed BETA 0.4.0, you may apply WHUpgrade0-4to0-5.sql. If you have successfully installed BETA 0.5.0 you may apply WHUpgrade0-5to0.7.sql.

Apply the rest of the code in it's respective location as with previous installs.

Just to be SAFE! The zip file provided is based on a directory structure "/www/phpnuke6.5/...". This is what the development machine is. Future PROD zips will start from "html" under your particular PHPNuke version.

Steps to success:

• Unzip and copy files to their correct locations in your PHPNuke site
• CHMOD the "modules/WeatherHarvest/cache" directory to 777
• Apply the WeatherHarvest0-7.sql file AND WeatherHarvestMORE0-7.sql. It is applied through the mySQL command line or through an admin tool such as phpMyAdmin. This file will wipe old databases, and create new ones.
• IMPORTANT: Before activating your block and module, you must go through your admin panel and set up your defaults in the initialization table. All paths are based on "root" and must have a trailing '/' You'll receive errors if they are entered wrong. Your cache paths from "root" should all be the same. If you are a power user, you can set up a seperate cache path for radar images.
  • Note: Cache timeout is for cleanup and regeneration of data files. NOAA typically updates every 30 minutes unless a significant event is taking place.
  • HTTP protocol is the preferred. If you choose FTP, you could experience a "slow" site. I give you the lodaed gun - use it wisely!
• Once you have successfully saved your initialization data, activate your block and module. You may place the module in your "links" block, as it now has menu options for users.
• At this time, you may want to set up your default site city. You perform this through the admin panel.

A quick note about root paths Keep in mind that the root path of an Operating System and the root path of PHPNuke are very different things. When trying to find the root path of your hosting Operating System, you need to telnet to the system, change directories to '/' ('\' for Windows systems), and then progress until you are back at your sites home directory. The root directory of your PHPNuke install will minimally be the home directory of your site (where you are when you first log-in to your telnet session). I know this can be confusing, and it's certainly not easy to explain - but it makes a HUGE difference in your ability to read/write to various directories in your site path.

BUG Reports and Wish lists

Let me know what's going on! Use the forum at www.ibdeeming.com to report all issues or make suggestions. Anyone who's worked with me in the past knows I'm pretty wide open!

What's Next

I have begun the design and initial work on the following:

• Looping Radar
• WeatherHarvest Block ADMIN
• More radar images in the database - they're not all there because it's a manual entry process, and very boring!
• Admin functions for the weather stations
• Zip code support
• Weather forecasts

THANKS!

Thanks for using this "add-on" I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy making it!