Forum Moderators: phranque
is an open source version which translates the METAR data worldwide (although its value depends on the frequency of airports in your particular country).
Edit: Changed URL to original site
Why worry? I doubt they have the time to pursue people who use their 'content' - if you grab what they say the weather is, and display it in your own way then there is no problem. Apart from the ethics of using their bandwidth. Even if it was illegal you might as well do it anyway. (Not legal advice.)
Wow. So much for taking the moral high road. What ever happened to "doing the right thing".
You know, a simple email to the site owner might simply grant you permission.
How about the idea that they could offer this service to other sites (for a modest fee) based on your script? They let you use it for free, but they charge other sites $20 a year or something - or even just a link back.
[nws.noaa.gov...] ...and... [nws.noaa.gov...]
METAR data from around the world is available from the NOAA. You'll need to know the ICAO code for the (particular) airport in the city your interested in. Someone mentioned Ottawa... The ICAO code for the Ottawa International Airport is CYOW. You can FTP to...
weather.noaa.gov/data/observations/metar/stations/CYOW.TXT
...to download the latest available (coded METAR) data for Ottawa.
For data from John F. Kennedy International Airport, just replace CYOW.TXT with KJFK.TXT. (Note the uppercase filenames...)
Decoded METAR data is also available, at a slightly different FTP address ([...]/metar/decoded/XXXX.TXT), but I found it much easier to parse the coded data than the decoded.
No scraping, nothing unethical, and nothing illegal... :)
By example, (and making legal comparisons by example can be fallacious, I know, but...) if I publish a newspaper, and in that newspaper I print a piece of public domain information (like, say... oh... the weather), it is FAIR USE for soemone else to use that weather information however they wish. Not to resuse my graphics, etc., those are intellectual property, but the information itself cannot be copyrighted.
Now, to the specifics of using someone else's server to get your weather information - if that server is not protected in any way, and if it does not serve a copyright notice along with the information it provides, then the use of that information in a NON-SUBSTANTIVE way (ie. not preserving the formatting, style etc. of the original piece) cannot be copyright restricted. Since the format of the information presented is open-source (XML with no private DTD), the information itself is public domain (from government weather stations), and the presentation of it is freely accessible, the only argument for the specific case of copyright on the weathereye information would be access to the system itself, which is not an intellectual property issue. It cannot be argued that you violated reverse-engineering laws by watching your own sockets, either. You have a right to know what systems your computer is connecting to and why.
The main issue would lie in whether the system was private or public. I would argue that since the system operates on a public port (http), and is freely accessible to the internet community at large(it would be fairly easy to include a login sequence in the weathereye software), no claim to system intrusion can be made. It is the onus of a company to protect its own systems from intrusion, and broadcasting XML over an open port doesn't really seem to be the way to do that.
It would be interesting to hear from The Weather Network staff on this issue. The system looks to have been implemented in a completely open way. I wonder if that was intended.
In a nutshell, someone cannot be nailed with copyright or intellectual property infringement if they write on their website "The Weather Network said..." Likewise if you download the information via XML and republish it on your site with a statement that says "Source: The Weather Network" with a link to TWN, how is that copyright infringement, Mr. WRONG WRONG WRONG etc.? If you're going to make a bald statement that something is untrue, at least try and explain yourself... if you have any facts or ideas, that is.
Haven't used PHPweather [sourceforge.net], but it looks worth considering also.
Why fuss about site-scraping and all that bother when there are two free scripts available to serve weather data legally?
Here's the default HTML for a small image:
<a href="http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/71630.html">
<img src="http://banners.wunderground.com/banner/infobox_both/language/www/global/stations/71630.gif"
alt="Click for Muskoka, Ontario Forecast" height=108 width=144></a>
