Aviation

May 12, 2009

Aviation Weather TAF Magnet for your Web Site

METARs and TAFs are an ICAO abbreviated weather format. The NWS has METARs and TAFs available as text files for most airports in the world. You can easily build a METAR or TAF magnet for your web site using an xml/http request. TAFs are a little more difficult since they have multiple lines. I split my lines by finding and replacing the carriage return in the NWS text file. Before you get started you will need your ICAO Station ID. My ID is KDAN. You can look up your closest ID here. 

Here is what my TAF Magnet for Danville, VA (KDAN) looks like:

Here is the .asp source code for my TAF Magnet:

<%
station = Ucase(Request.QueryString("location"))

Set jason = Server.CreateObject ("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")

jason.Open "GET", "http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/forecasts/taf/stations/" & station & ".TXT", False
jason.Send

If jason.Status <> 200 Then
 Response.Write("N/A")
Else
Response.Write("<html><head><title>TAF</title>")
Response.Write("<style>")
Response.Write("body {margin:0px; font-family:Verdana; font-size:12px; color:#" & fontcolor & ";} ")
Response.Write("table {font-size: 12px; background:#" & bcolor & "; border: 1px solid #" & bordercolor & "; padding: 2px;} ")
Response.Write("a:link {color:#" & fontcolor & "; font-size: 10px;} ")
Response.Write("a:visited {color:#" & fontcolor & "; font-size: 10px;}</style>")
Response.Write("</head><body><table><tr><td>")
tafw = jason.responseText
tafw = Replace(tafw, " ", "&nbsp;")
Response.Write(Replace(tafw, vbLf, "<br>"))
Response.Write("</td></tr><tr><td><a href=""http://weather.gov/disclaimer.html""_blank"">NWS Disclaimer</a> | <a href=""http://weather4webs.com/""_top"">Weather4Webs.com</a>")
Response.Write("</td></tr></table></body></html>")
End If
Set jason = Nothing
%>

Posted by Jason Liepe on May 12, 2009 at 02:12 PM in Aviation | | Comments (0)

Aviation Weather METAR Magnet for your Web Site

METARs and TAF are an ICAO abbreviated weather format. The NWS has METARs and TAFs available as text files for most airports in the world. You can easily build a METAR or TAF magnet for your web site using an xml/http request. Before you get started you will need your ICAO Station ID. My ID is KDAN. You can look up your closest ID here. 

Here is what my METAR Magnet for Danville, VA (KDAN) looks like:

Here is my classic .asp source code:

<%
station = Request.QueryString("location")

Set jason = Server.CreateObject ("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")

jason.Open "GET", "http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/observations/metar/stations/" & station & ".TXT", False
jason.Send

If jason.Status <> 200 Then
 Response.Write("N/A")
Else
 metar = jason.responseText
End If
Else
 metar = "Please enter a ICAO station ID."
End If
%>

<html>
<head>
<title>Jason's METAR</title>
</head>

<body>
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2">
  <tr>
    <td><%=Response.Write(metar)%></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td style="font-size: 10px;"><a href="http://weather.gov/disclaimer.html" target="_blank">NWS Disclaimer</a> | <a href="http://weather4webs.com/" target="_top">Weather4Webs.com</a></td>
  </tr>
</table>
</body>

</html>

Be sure to read and use the NWS Disclaimer.

Posted by Jason Liepe on May 12, 2009 at 01:50 PM in Aviation | | Comments (1)

January 21, 2008

Converting TAFs to XML

I have also worked on converting the TAF txt files to xml. The trouble is providing for you parsers that want to write each line of the TAF. I have split the TAF txt on the return (vbLf). Here is as far as I have gotten so far.

http://weather4webs.com/aviation/taf_xml.asp?taf=KDAN

Replace "KDAN" in the query string with your station id.

Make sure you are aware of the NWS Service Disclaimer! 

Posted by Jason Liepe on January 21, 2008 at 02:40 PM in Aviation | | Comments (0)

January 20, 2008

Convert METARs to XML

I was impressed that the NWS had all the current observations available via a simple XML feed. The current obs are plain language and have the pictures and the XML is simple to parse. The trouble is, in aviation, particually us pilots who have been flying for a while are used to and even prefer the old short hand weather reports now called METARs.

The NWS has all the METARs available, but they are all txt files not XML. Since I do a lot of web sites that require the METAR, I used weather4webs.com to transform the txt file into XML. This way I do not have to code a txt file stream on every web site.

You can access my METAR XML by putting your station id in the the querystring of this link:

http://www.weather4webs.com/aviation/metar_xml.asp?metar=KDAN

Replace "KDAN" with your station id: http://www.weather4webs.com/locations.asp. Here is the source code:

<%
wxmetar = Request("metar")

Set meget = Server.CreateObject ("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")meget.Open "GET", "http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/observations/metar/stations/" & wxmetar & ".TXT", False
meget.Send

If meget.Status <> 200 Then
 wxresult = "Not available or incorrect station id."
 avail = "false"
Else
 wxresult = meget.responseText
 avail = "true"
End If
Set meget = Nothing

Response.ContentType = "text/xml"
Response.Write "<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""UTF-8""?>" & vbcrlf & _
"<metar>" & vbcrlf & _
"  <copyright>Copyright Weather4Webs.com</copyright>" & vbcrlf & _
"  <disclaimer>http://www.nws.noaa.gov/disclaimer.html</disclaimer>" & vbcrlf & _
"  <available>" & avail & "</available>" & vbcrlf & _
"  <return>" & wxresult & "</return>" & vbcrlf & _
"</metar>"
%>

Make sure you are aware of the NWS Service Disclaimer! 

Posted by Jason Liepe on January 20, 2008 at 02:46 PM in Aviation | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)