Elliott Brueggeman - PHP and Web Development Information

Documentation Overview

• Personal and Commercial Usage Rights
• Easy Setup Instructions
• Function Reference

Personal and Commercial Usage Rights

PHPWeatherLib is free for both commercial and personal use as long as all sites include at least one link to the project homepage. ( http://www.ebrueggeman.com/phpweatherlib ) Link examples:

Weather by PHPWeatherLib | Weather on this site generated by the PHPWeatherLib Library

Easy Setup Instructions

To use PHPWeatherLib, you must do three things:

1. Include the PHP file phpweatherlib.php in your PHP page on your PHP enabled web server or hosting plan.
2. Create a WeatherLib object with the NOAA reporting station call letters as the only argument.
3. Call any of the PHPWeatherLib functions to return current weather data from the reporting station specified.

Including the PHP file

To include the PHP file, add this php include call at the top of your page source code:

include("phpweatherlib.php");

Creating the WeatherLib Object

Before you create the Weather Lib Object you must find the call letters to the NOAA weather reporting station that you wish to reference. Visit the NOAA's National Weather Service page to find the appropriate weather station. http://www.weather.gov/data/current_obs/ Click the Select a State drop down and then click Find. A list of results for that state will be shown followed by four uppercase call letters (example KJFK, KJAN, etc.)

Now you can create the WeatherLib object in your source code. Create an object by assigning a variable to a new instance of the WeatherLib object with the call letters as the only argument to the object constructor. For example, to create the object for New York's JFK Airport, call letters KJFK, use the following PHP code:

$weatherObj=new WeatherLib("KJFK");

WeatherLib includes error reporting and supporting functions. To handle errors gracefully, it is recommended that your use these feature when creating a WeatherLib() object.

The following code displays the appropriate error message if the WeatherLib object cannot be created or has trouble parsing the XML weather feed.

$weatherObj=new WeatherLib("KJFK")
if($weatherObj->has_error())
{
     echo $weatherObj->get_error();			
}

Calling PHPWeatherLib's Functions to Return Weather Data

There are many included functions in the PHPWeatherLib library to retrieve weather data from the station you specified when creating the WeatherLib() object. Below is an example of a few of these functions. The full function list is listed below in the Function Reference section.

The following code displays:

Right now in New York City, Central Park, NY it is 75.0 F!

$location=$weatherObj->get_location();
$temp=$weatherObj->get_temp_f();
echo "Right now in " . $location . " it is " . $temp . " F!";		

Function Reference