The National Weather Service Parser (NWS Parser) was created for local and state governments or anyone else who wishes to display the local weather on a website without any branding or forced display styles that are typical of third party weather widgets. This code will parse an XML feed of your choosing from the National Weather Service and display the resulting data on a web page. The user only needs to supply the name of the XML feed that represents the nearest NWS weather station, and a few other variables depending on which version is used. This code requires PHP 5.0.9 or later and/or support for PHP's SimpleXML. It is implemented as a function that returns an array of variables. The user can choose which elements to display and how to display them. Sample display files are also included for your use. There are two versions included: one that writes the XML data to a file on the user's server; and a second version that stores the data in a MySQL database. This code is licensed under the two clause BSD license. See http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-clause. SETUP INSTRUCTIONS These setup instructions apply to both versions. Where the steps differ, step A will refer to the flat file version and step B will refer to the database version. 1. Download and install Weather icons In order to reduce the load on the National Weather Service (NWS) servers, it is recommended that you download the NWS weather icons pack and install them locally on your own server. The icons can be downloaded directly from: http://w1.weather.gov/images/fcicons/Weather%20Icons.zip The default installation location is "/images/weather/." If you choose a different location, please be sure to update the $iconspath variable with the correct location. A complete overview of the icons can be found here: http://www.weather.gov/xml/current_obs/weather.php You can also design your own weather icons. As long as they retain the same file names, they will work just fine with the NWS Parser function. **************** IMPORTANT NOTE! **************** As of October 15, 2012 it appears that the National Weather Service has changed the way they reference the weather icons in the XML feed, referencing PNG versions of the icons rather than JPG versions. Unfortunately, they have not updated the above-referenced zip file to include the new PNG versions. In order for your icons to display properly, I recommend converting all the existing JPG icons to PNG versions. 2.A. Setup local feeds directory By default, NWS Parser is set to write a copy of the NWS XML feed you choose to a directory called "feeds." You need to create this directory at the root of your server (or define your own alternative directory) and make sure it has proper permissions. The directory should be chmodded to '755' to allow the XML file to be written. 2.B. Setup database connection Supply your database connection options (hostname, username, password, database name, table name) in the $db_info array. NWS Parser uses this information to connect to your database and create the table with all appropriate fields the first time it's called. 3. Define variables There are three required user configurable variables: A. $remotefeed - This is the XML file name of your nearest local NWS reading station. Currently, this defaults to "KBDU.xml." Visit http://www.weather.gov/xml/current_obs/ to get a list of the nearest reporting stations in your area. B. $localfeed - If you're using the flat file version, this is the file name/path that you want the weather parser to copy the NWS' data to. NWS Parser writes to a local file and then makes calls to that file in order to reduce the load on the NWS servers. This is set by default to /feeds/KBDU.xml. If you're using the database version, there is no need for this variable. C. $iconspath - This is the path to the locaton of the weather icons on your local server. Currently, this defaults to "/images/weather/." 4. Optional Variables There are two optional variables: D. $forecast - Optional link for full forecast on NWS site. You can get the link to the full forecast for your area by visiting: http://www.weather.gov/ and using the form to enter the correct location. The resulting page is the URL you'll want to use. E. $mobile - Optional link for mobile forecast on NWS site. The mobile weather link for your area can be found on the full forecast page (see D. above). Check the right side of the page for a link titled 'Mobile Weather'. 5. Include Function Include the function code in the page where you want to display your weather data. See the included sample files for how to handle the includes. Generally, the include should look like: // Include the NWS Parser function include 'nws_weather_parser.php'; Just replace 'nws_weather_parser.php' with the path to wherever the file resides on your server. For instance, the path could be '/weather/nws_weather_parser.php'. For the database version, the include file would be 'nws_db_weather_parser.php'. 6. Reference The Function You must actually reference the function on the page you wish to display the weather: A. // Call the flat file function $xml = parse_weather($localfeed, $remotefeed); B. // Call the database function $xml = db_parse_weather($remotefeed, $db_info) 7. Display Weather Data Display the weather data on your page. The NWS provides a PDF Product Description document that describes the XML feed and shows all the data that can be referenced (note: this document is slightly out of date and may not match the XML in the actual live feed. Please review the actual XML document if you have issues displaying particular information). You can choose whatever pieces of data you want to display on your page. The included sample_output.php and sample_db_output.php files show you how to reference each item. Please note that accessing the variables for display is slightly different depending on whether you're using the flat file or the database version. A. Flat File version: All of the nodes in the XML file are stored in an array named $xml and can be easily referenced like '$xml->weather'. B. Database version: All the variables returned by the SQL query are extracted into variables with a prefix of nws_ (to avoid name collisions) so that they can be easily referenced by name like '$nws_weather'. The variable names will be identical to the table field names with 'nws_' added to the beginning. Product Description Document http://products.weather.gov/PDD/NWS_Current_Observations_RSS_XML.pdf 8. Sample CSS A sample CSS file has been included as an example of what can be done to visually display the weather data. Feel free to use this file as the basis for your own CSS or discard it. 9. Error Checking The weather parser does some basic error checking. A. The flat file version first checks to see if the directory containing the XML file is writable or not. If the directory is writable, it then checks for the existence of the XML file itself. If the file exists, the function then checks to see if the file is more than an hour old. If it is, or the file doesn't exist, the function attempts to grab a new copy of the file and write it to the directory. If the directory or the file are not writable, the function will return an error instead of the XML data. B. For the database version, the function first checks to be sure it can connect to the database. If it can, it checks to see if the table already exists. If it doesn't, it will create the table with all appropriate fields and populate it with data from the XML file. Next, it queries the database for the last entry. If it finds no entry, or the entry is older than one hour, it will attempt to load a new file from the National Weather Service and write it to the database. It will then once again query for the last entry and display it. If it cannot connect to the database; create the table; read or write data to the database; or load the XML file from the NWS, the function will return an error instead of the XML data. The sample_output.php and sample_db_output.php files are set to display a generic error message if an error is detected. If you are in a test environment, or you run into problems getting the weather parser to work in a live environment, you can choose to display the actual output from the errors. Please use caution when doing this, as it can expose portions of your directory or database structure which could be used by malicious users to exploit your server.