meteo-alarm-weather-warnings

Copyright © 2018 Wayne D Grant

Licensed under the MIT License

JSON formatted Web Service API to fetch weather warnings from Metoalarm. Written in PHP.

Overview

Metoalarm is a web site that provides up-to-date weather warnings for most of Europe. While it provides a useful website and RSS feeds it does not, at the time of writing, provide a web service interface.

meteo-alarm-weather-warnings remedies this by providing a simple JSON formatted Web Service API that proxies through to Meteoalarm's RSS feeds.

meteo-alarm-weather-warnings is especially useful for integrating weather warnings into a 3rd-party website (as has been done here for several UK regions: https://waynedgrant.com/weather/warn.html).

Requirements

1. PHP version 5 or above installed on the web server

Installation

• Download the source code for the latest release and unzip it

• Upload all .php and .json files in meteo-alarm-weather-warnings/src to a location on your web server

• Modify your web server to process .json files using PHP. For example, for Apache add the following to your .htaccess file:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .json

• Alternatively rename the warnings.json file to be called warnings.php

Execution

Hit the URL of your deployed warnings.json file using a web browser or other REST client. Both JSON and JSONP are supported.

The following GET parameters are supported:

GET Parameter	Description	Required?	Default Value
country	Country to fetch weather warnings for. e.g. UK, DE, FR, etc. See Metoalarm for a full list of countries.	Yes	N/A
region	Region within country to fetch weather warnings for, e.g. 004 is Lothian & Borders in the UK. See Metoalarm for a full list of regions.	No	All regions in country
date_time_format	Format string to use for fetched date/time values. See datetime.createfromformat.php for details.	No	l H:i T
time_zone	Timezone used to express fetched date/time values. See timezones.php for a full list of supported values.	No	Europe/London

For example:

All weather warnings for the UK:

/warnings.json?country=UK

Weather warnings for the Gelderland region of the Netherlands:

/warnings.json?country=NL&region=014

Weather warnings for Germany with a specialized date/time format expressed in the local timezone:

/warnings.json?country=DE&date_time_format=Y/M/d%20H:i%20T&time_zone=Europe/Berlin

Response Fields

Success Response

An example of a successful reply:

{
    "endpoint": {
        "url": "...",
        "version": "1.1",
        "github_project": "https://github.com/waynedgrant/meteo-alarm-weather-warnings",
        "copyright": "Copyright © 2018 Wayne D Grant (www.waynedgrant.com)"
    },
    "warnings": {
        "country": "UK",
        "regions": [
            {
                "name": "Dumfries and Galloway",
                "code": "006",
                "link": "http://web.meteoalarm.eu/en_UK/0/0/UK006.html",
                "today": [
                    {
                        "awareness": {
                            "icon": "http://web.meteoalarm.eu/documents/rss/wflag-l3-t1.jpg",
                            "awareness_type": {
                                "type": 1,
                                "description": "Wind"
                            },
                            "awareness_level": {
                                "level": 3,
                                "colour": "Amber",
                                "description": "The weather is dangerous. Unusual meteorological phenomena have been forecast. Damage and casualties are likely to happen. Be very vigilant and keep regularly informed about the detailed expected meteorological conditions. Be aware of the risks that might be unavoidable. Follow any advice given by your authorities."
                            }
                        },
                        "period": {
                            "from": "Sunday 03:00 GMT",
                            "until": "Sunday 12:00 GMT"
                        },
                        "description": "Some very strong winds are expected over parts of Northern Ireland and southwest Scotland on New Years Eve. There will probably be some damage to buildings such as tiles blown from roofs, with flying debris likely with the possibility of injuries or danger to life. In coastal areas large waves are likely as well as beach material being thrown onto coastal roads, sea fronts and perhaps some properties. Longer journey times and cancellations are likely as road, rail, air and ferry services may be affected. Some roads and bridges are likely to close. There is also a good chance of power cuts and the potential to affect other services such as mobile phone coverage."
                    },

                    ... any other warnings for today ...
                ],
                "tomorrow": [
                    {
                        ... warnings for tomorrow ...
                    }
                ],
                "published": "Sunday 00:00 GMT"
            },
            {
                ... other regions ...
            }
        ]
    }
}

Awareness Types

Code	Type
0	No Warnings
1	Wind
2	Snow/Ice
3	Thunderstorms
4	Fog
5	Extreme High Temperatures
6	Extreme Low Temperatures
7	Costal Event
8	Forest Fire
9	Avalanche
10	Rain
11	Unavailable
12	Flooding
13	Rain/Flooding

Awareness Levels

Code	Level
0	White/Unknown
1	Green/No Warnings
2	Yellow
3	Amber
4	Red

Failure Response

Examples of failure replies:

{
    "error": "GET parameter country is required"
}

{
    "error": "Response code 404 returned by http://www.meteoalarm.eu/documents/rss/NARNIA.rss"
}

Unit Testing

• Install PHPUnit
• cd meteo-alarm-weather-warnings
• phpunit --bootstrap bootstrap.php test/