Base-Canada users -- ec-forecast/ec-radar being updated...

[saratogaWX]

Looks like the Environment Canada website has made some changes and I'm updating the ec-forecast.php and ec-radar.php scripts to support the changes.

I'll let you know when the updates are ready.

Best regards,
Ken

[saratogaWX]

I have completed the needed mods to ec-forecast.php (V2.14 - 16-Apr-2012)

Standalone users: get source or package from http://saratoga-weather.org/scripts-ECf ... ECforecast
Template users: use http://saratoga-weather.org/wxtemplates/updates.php for Base-Canada, 16-Apr-2013

Note: The EC has switched to using UTF-8 for their website so to retain the output as ISO-8859-1, a lot of iconv() calls
were added to the code. I found at least one instance of the EC posting text with mixed UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1 special characters which chokes the current PHP versions of iconv() .. so if you see a detailed forecast with funny characters in it,
that's the native UTF-8 showing as the iconv() failed .. hopefully, the EC folks will use UTF-8 throughout their forecasts so that issue should be few and far between.
Also, the URLs changed from weatheroffice.gc.ca to weather.gc.ca .. if you use $ECURLs with the old address, the code will replace 'weatheroffice' with 'weather' in the URL so it should work fine.

After loading up the new ec-forecast.php on your site, run the page with ?cache to refresh the cache file and your forecasts should display again.

I should have a fix for the ec-radar issue(s) tomorrow (17-Apr-2013)

Best regards,
Ken

[saratogaWX]

I have finished with the updates to support Environment Canada's new website design.

ec-forecast.php V1.15 - 17-Apr-2013
fixes the $title issue so alerts will show the name of the city
Standalone users: get source or package from http://saratoga-weather.org/scripts-ECf ... ECforecast

ec-radar.php V1.09 - 17-Apr-2013
changes for new EC website design, UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1 conversion and a modified method for the /radar/ directory
Standalone users: get source or package from http://saratoga-weather.org/scripts-ECradar.php#ECradar

Template users can get both scripts using the update tool for Base-Canada, 17-Apr-2013

Best regards,
Ken

Template users: use http://saratoga-weather.org/wxtemplates/updates.php for Base-Canada, 16-Apr-2013

[PaulMy]

Well done again Ken. Thanks very much for being on top of those things.

Paul

[saratogaWX]

Did a fix for the wxadvisory.php page to correct URLs and resize the graphic if need be. The new main copy contents are

Code: Select all

<div id="main-copy">
  
  
  <div align="center">       
	<?php 
		 $doInclude	   = true; // handle ec-forecast and WXSIM include also
		 $doPrint	   = false; //  ec-forecast.php setting
		 include_once($SITE['fcstscript']);
		 if ($alertstring <> '') { 
		 print $alertstring; // will produce alert box with link if advisories found
		 } else { 
		 print "<p class=\"advisoryBox\">".langtransstr("No watches or warnings in effect for")." $title.</p>\n"; 
		 }
	?>
<?php 
if(preg_match('|narrow|',$SITE['CSSscreen'])) {
	$wtext = 'width="610" height="523"'; 
} else {
	$wtext = 'width="852" height="731"'; 
}
if($SITE['lang'] == 'fr') {$L = 'f'; } else {$L = 'e'; } ?>
<a href="http://weather.gc.ca/warnings/index_<?php echo $L; ?>.html" style="border: none">
<img src="http://weather.gc.ca/data/download/canada.png" style="border:none;" <?php echo $wtext; ?> alt="national advisories"/></a>
<?php if($SITE['lang'] == 'fr') { $legend = 'CanadaLegend-fr.gif'; } else { $legend = 'CanadaLegend-en.gif'; } ?>
<img src="<?php echo $legend;?>" alt="National Advisory Legend" title="National Advisory Legend"/>
<?php print "<p><a href=\"$ECURL\">$ECNAME</a></p>\n"; ?>
  </div>
  
  
</div><!-- end main-copy -->

or you can get the update from the updates tool page (Base-Canada, 18-Apr-2012)

Best regards,
Ken

[PaulMy]

Hi Ken,
I did the wxadvisory update and that also works well. One issue I have now encountered though. A few weeks ago I made wxradar and ec-radar php files for each of the 31 EC radar sites by modifying those files with each site's specific letter code and renaming, such as wxradar.php change the include_once to 'WBI' and save as wxradar-wbi.php, and the same for the ec-radar.php change the $siteID = 'WBI' and save as ec-radar-wbi.php. Then I had each as a separate line in the flyout-menu and looked good and worked well.

However, since the changes that have been to the templates in the past days I can not get the new wxradar-???.php to display that site's radar but instead it shows the default as in the Settings.php. I am only showing 3 radar sites on my site at the moment until I can get this working again. By entering the url with ec-radar-???.php http://www.komokaweather.com/ec-radar-wbi.php it loads that specific site's radar map so I have the template working. Likely just a setting change needed somewhere to override the default from Settings.php?

As was pointed out a few weeks ago there is an better/easier way to accomplish what I wanted, but my knowledge and understanding is not there as yet to know how to tackle that so I used the individual files method

Thanks for any hint you can give me again.
Paul

[saratogaWX]

Hi Paul,

There is a simpler way to make the different radar sites use the same base wxradar.php page.

http://www.komokaweather.com/wxradar.php will show your default page
adding ?site=SSS to the URL in links will cause it to show the requested site like:

http://www.komokaweather.com/wxradar.php?site=ONT shows the Ontario sites
http://www.komokaweather.com/wxradar.php?site=NAT shows the big National sites

Any of the regional or national site have hotlinks built into the map and clicking on them will do the same thing.. show the requested site.

So.. if you want a list of all the sites to be linked, just insert them in your flyout-menu.xml with link="wxradar.php?site=SSS" in the <item /> entries.

So.. no fuss or bother with editing multiple copies of the script are needed to do what you want

Hope this helps...

Best regards,
Ken

[PaulMy]

Yes that was very helpful and thank you again. Made the change to flyout-menu and got them all listed, plus the regional sites. This was so much easier but then one doesn't learn as well if it is all easy.

Paul

[Fox]

I updated the forecast images to the new, more modern pictures used by EC. I ended up using .png, so you have to change the replace_icon function if anyone wants to use them:

Code: Select all

function replace_icon($icon,$pop) {
// now replace icon with spiffy updated icons with embedded PoP to
//    spruce up the dull ones from www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca 
  global $imagedir;
			  
  $curicon = $icon;
  if ($pop > 0) {
	$testicon = preg_replace("|.gif|","p$pop.gif",$curicon);
	if (file_exists("$imagedir/$testicon")) {
	  $newicon = $testicon;
	} else {
	  $newicon = $curicon;
	}
  } else {
	$newicon = $curicon;
  }
  return($newicon);  
}

to

Code: Select all

function replace_icon($icon,$pop) {
// now replace icon with spiffy updated icons with embedded PoP to
//    spruce up the dull ones from www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca 
  global $imagedir;
			  
  $curicon = $icon;
  if ($pop > 0) {
	$testicon = preg_replace("|.gif|","p$pop.png",$curicon);
	if (file_exists("$imagedir/$testicon")) {
	  $newicon = $testicon;
	} else {
	  $newicon = $curicon;
	}
  } else {
	$newicon = preg_replace("|.gif|",".png",$curicon);
  }
  return($newicon);  
}

Icons here: http://foxed.ca/cumulus/ec-icons.zip

[saratogaWX]

Nicely done!

The new icons look great. I'll put a variable in ec-forecast.php to allow setting the type of icon (.gif or .png) for the next update.

Thanks again for sharing your created icons from the new EC site set.

Best regards,
Ken

[saratogaWX]

I've done a major update to ec-forecast.php (now at V2.16 - 13-May-2013) which includes the following changes:

* settings to control display of dates with day names for both icons and detail forecast legends
* ability to use new transparent PNG icons in place of the older GIF icons
* improved diagnostics for HTTP fetch from weather.gc.ca website, and a built-in retry for a 30x redirect
* multiple forecast locations with drop-down control selector
* support for cache files in the $SITE['CacheFileDir'] location

You can install the V2.16+ version to directly replace your older version in the template with no additional
configuration necessary. If you would like to enable the newer features (like day/date, PNG icons, multiple
forecast locations) then copy the following to your template Settings.php and make the configuration changes
you desire.

Add this to your Settings.php after the $SITE['fcsticonsdirEC'] entry

Code: Select all

# --- new settings with ec-forecast.php V2.16+
$SITE['ECiconDayDate'] = false;        // =false; Icon names = day of week. =true; icon names as Day dd Mon
$SITE['ECdetailDayDate'] = false;      // =false; for day name only, =true; detail day as name, nn mon. 
$SITE['ECiconType'] = '.gif';            // ='.gif' or ='.png' for ec-icons file type 
// Note: for .png, make sure you have installed the PNG icons in the $SITE['fcsticonsdirEC'] directory
//
// The optional multi-city forecast .. make sure the first entry is for the $SITE['fcsturlEC'] location
//*
$SITE['ECforecasts'] = array(
 // Location|forecast-URL  (separated by | character)
'St. Catharines, ON|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/on-107_metric_e.html', // St. Catharines, ON
'Vancouver, BC|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/bc-74_metric_e.html',
'Calgary, AB|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/ab-52_metric_e.html',
'Regina, SK|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/sk-32_metric_e.html',
'Winnipeg, MB|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/mb-38_metric_e.html',
'Ottawa (Kanata - Orléans), ON|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/on-118_metric_e.html',
'Montréal, QC|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/qc-147_metric_e.html',
'Happy Valley-Goose Bay, NL|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/nl-23_metric_e.html',
'St. John\'s, NL|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/nl-24_metric_e.html',
'Fredericton, NB|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/nb-29_metric_e.html',
'Halifax, NS|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/ns-19_metric_e.html',
'Charlottetown, PE|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/pe-5_metric_e.html',
'Whitehorse, YT|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/yt-16_metric_e.html',
'Yellowknife, NT|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/nt-24_metric_e.html',
'Resolute, NU|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/nu-27_metric_e.html',
'Iqaluit, NU|http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/nu-21_metric_e.html',
); 

//*/ 
# --- end of new settings with ec-forecast.php V2.16+

The new transparent PNG format icons are courtesy of Thayer Fox at http://foxed.ca/ who has given
his kind permission to distribute them from the Saratoga-Weather.org website.
http://saratoga-weather.org/ec-icons-png.zip -- the icons should be placed in the same directory as the old .GIF icons.

Saratoga template users can get the update from the update tool page for Base-Canada, 13-May-2013

Standalone users should use the scripts page for download.

Best regards,
Ken

[gemini06720]

Ken, it appears that, once again, Environment Canada has made some additional changes to their forecast pages - I just checked (at 13:45 PDT) both your 'demo' and 'in-page demo' and get the same negative results.

A while back, I wrote to the people at Environment Canada and one of the administrators suggested that I get the up-to-date weather data from their XML templates - he gave me the following link to obtain the required templates: 'Index of /citypage_weather'.

I believe that using the XML data templates would certainly involve a complete rewrite of the 'ec-forecast' script, but it is also my understanding from my additional communications with the administrator at Environment Canada that using the XML templates would prevent also the situations you and I are encountering whenever some changes/modifications are made to display/presentation the Environment Canada pages - might it be worth to invest some of your time in order to eliminate/suppress the dependency on extracting data from an ever changing HTML page...

[saratogaWX]

Sigh.. just when we thought is was going to work for awhile, the EC webmaster fiddled slightly with the HTML markup and broke the script again.

But.. it's all fixed now with V2.17 - 15-May-2013

Template users: use the updates tool page for Base-Canada, 15-May-2013

Standalone users: use the ec-forecast.php scripts page for the download link.

Ray, thanks for the info link on an XML forecast .. I'll take a look at that, and if it provides the same info, I'll work up a V3 script to use it instead. Pesky webmasters at EC seem to enjoy tweaking the generated HTML for their page.

Best regards,
Ken